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.
[ 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.]
[ He makes this easy, Rey thinks, though she doesn't correct him. Weaponizing intimacy against her only allows her to separate herself, to separate Kylo Ren from Ben Solo in how he has chosen to use affection to instigate pain and instill punishment. That's what this has to be, at least, to her mind; he is too flaccid and too fumbling for it to be a genuine desire to have her like this, or perhaps it's just desperate to provoke a reaction out of her.
It hurts, all the same. Compartmentalizing herself, drifting away as she has learned to do in the three years that she has been alone with herself and her grief, does not lessen the physical sting or the reminder that Rey had wanted this with him — a long time ago, when his promise of not being alone had been soothed her. The sting of his teeth, sharp against the bruising imprint his fingertips left across her throat, allows her to concentrate there instead.
She closes her eyes, unresponsive — even when it looks like she might be, breath pausing only for her to inhale smoothly again. He makes that easy, too, fingers digging into the breast band that covers her chest. Makes it easy to prove her point that having a body does not mean having her. ]
... It won't work.
[ She says, finally, like a ragdoll as her head falls to the side. She should know. She has tried, after all, with herself. With another. Malnutrition has turned her underweight, made her too small and unable to lubricate well. The thought only brings her back to food, the meal he had spilled; despite his claims, she is certain he will be the thing to kill her with misery and neglect, unable to even remember to keep her alive. ]
[That comes unbidden against his will. He needs it to work -- they both do, as far as he is concerned. He is not going to pretend he has any idea of how to force the issue, but he's definitely going to try. He takes the sharp inhales as cues, working whatever he can manage to get some kind of response out of her. His desperation is palpable, searching for some kind of relief from his own self destruction -- continuing to ruin and destroy everything he touches.
He does note that her breasts are smaller than he remembers. All of her seems different, now that he is this close. If he wasn't so sure of her Force signature (and how much she viscerally resists him in every way possible), he might have wondered if he picked up the wrong woman.
So, concluding that working at her breasts is a useless venture for both of them. That hand goes south instead, working to undo her pants.]
[ It confirms what she had assumed: he won't be satisfied until he can convince himself she still feels for him. Searching inside of her, still, for a glimmer of hope. But Rey, as he had known her, had been willing to forgive; she is less inclined to it, instead infuriated by how he doubles down, determined and needy.
Challenging him had been a mistake, she realizes, for how it has only fueled his desperation to turn away from the truth. She doesn't shy from it, reiterating with a new hardness, ]
It won't. [ He doesn't know her body any better than she does. Rey resents the mere suggestion. ] I'm too small.
[ Once he gets her pants free, there is proof to that claim. The spur of her hips is a sharp protrusion, jutting out like it might break free from her skin. Her hand grips his wrist, suddenly, clamping her finger into the bone to get his attention. ]
Do you really hate me so much that you would do this to me?
[ It isn't a ploy — not fully one, at least, for how quietly the question comes. ]
[For a moment, it seems like he might throw her off, to lean into the monster he's embraced and that she knows that he is. He gives a small jerk of his arm without any real strength behind it like he doesn't want her to touch him, to stop him, to make him think about it.
It's her words that get him once she sees how much she has slimmed down -- he still needed to do the work of getting hard, a task that was already going to prove to be monumental, without needing to pass this barrier as well.
He is too weak to kill her, too feeble to fuck her, and too cruel to hope to earn any real affection from her. Bringing her back was a mistake.
And yet, as he brushes calloused hands briefly and experimentally between the folds of her skin, he finds he has to lift his hand and look away. The guilt, the shame, the truth that he is desperate and pathetic and that he lost crushing him and his voice into something small.
Your mother didn't raise you this way a mocking voice he's nearly forgotten picks at him, bile rushing up his throat.]
I wish that I hated you more.
[He drops her pants back over her pelvis to give her back some modesty before turning away to clean up the mess he'd made when he'd attacked her in the first place.]
[ The loss of his warmth leaves her shivering, too thin to regulate her temperature well, but she makes no move to drag him back down. Bodily heat isn't worth his inclination to conflate need with connection, with attachment, with desire. ]
So do I.
[ If he were not a coward, if he could grant her the compassion of an escape, she would not still be trapped — would not still be breathing. More than that, it would more clearly define him as a monster, incapable of the iota of empathy that reminds her too vividly of Ben Solo.
But Ben Solo hadn't wanted her, either. Had eventually hated her, she thinks, to have destroyed so much of what she had loved. As much as she had not wanted him to touch her, it's almost debasing that Kylo Ren could not go through with touching her, too, repulsed by what he had seen of her — the ways she has destroyed herself in her attempts to destroy him. Moisture dribbles down the slopes of her cheekbones and mucus clogs her throat, choking wetly on the start of her tears.
Seeing what he has become makes it all feel too final. A reality, rather than the waking nightmare she has floated through. She had not been wrong to believe herself well and truly alone. It feels like mourning a loss all over again, now that he has confirmed what she had already known. Of course he had not cared for her, even if he could still not bring himself to give her the full brunt of his loathing.
Through her blurring vision, she rises feebly to her feet. He couldn't even spare her the humiliation of fumbling with her clothing, too weak to stand on her feet, bow-legged and shaking with exertion and emotion. Her chest rattles with the sobs she doesn't want to unleash, a quiet but ugly affair for how she sniffles through snot, threatening to bowl her over as she shakily tries to step into a pant leg. It's pitiful, pathetic; she hates him for that, too. ]
[The one thing that he had needed to succeed in, he did -- and all it brought him was emotional ruin. No rewards, no peace, only more scrutiny, pain, and misery. He cannot listen to her sobs anymore. Holding them back does nothing with the bond reinvigorated, and the tears roll freely down his cheeks -- born, where she refuses to let them fall.
He leaves after that without much of a word. He returns sometime later with another meal and a fresh canteen, but he does not linger in the room. Her mere presence makes him want to drop to his knees and howl in agony -- so he can't stay for long. It would only be a matter of time before Armitage started asking questions, prodding at his weakness in hopes to take command of the First Order. He could not let that happen.
And so the pattern continues. Kylo Ren, it seems, isn't so bad at keeping a pet. It keeps him on a schedule, though he makes no overtures about attempting to bond with her anymore.
She is bound when he is not in the room and when he is sleeping, unable to trust that she won't simply try to kill herself or him when he dares not to look. When she starts to put on some weight, he brings new garb -- standard issue officer fare.]
Unless you prefer to be bare.
[He drops the hat unceremoniously on top with the rest. It is the most he's said to her in some time.]
[ Weight rounds out the sharp edges of bone, returns the luminosity and warmth to her skin where it had once been wan and sallow. But there is no strength in it — a purposeful strategy, she believes at first, but it gives him too much credit. Surely Kylo Ren has not considered that binding her, granting limited movement, would turn her feeble from disuse of each muscle group.
Even relieving herself is often a feat of exertion. Another badge of humiliation to add to the list for how he has forced her to rely on him in that way, waiting for him to return and untie her like a pet, just so she can feel human for short-lived moments.
And through it all, she knows he is too much of a coward to truly look at her. To acknowledge her. To him, she is just a fixture in a room, easily forgotten. Rey makes no move to strike a conversation even on the days he does lower himself to speak to her, gone voluntarily mute, and there are no guards he seems to trust near her that would give her any outlet.
That's okay, Rey decides. She is too used to the loss of human contact, to being alone, to break under those conditions — but she cannot say she does not begrudge him for his avoidance, either. Resentment festers, swinging uncomfortably between rage and numb acceptance of his behavior, feeling like she has been abandoned once again; it is precisely why she does not leap to greet him, to even face him, when he finally speaks more than a single grunt or syllable to her now.
The silence endures so long that it gives the impression she doesn't intend to speak at all, but there is no concealing the way she mentally flinches in the bond. Time has passed, but she remembers all too clearly the last time she had been bare beneath him. He has forgotten, she thinks, or has merely leveraged her grief over it as a means of getting her into what he wants. ]
I like my clothes.
[ She offers that, finally, small and faraway like a regressive child — and she might be, returning to old habits, scratching marks with bloodied, dulling nails into the refresher's walls when she gets free for long enough. Maybe he has a point; she has not changed from her own, has not stripped for the spray of the 'fresher. She must stink by now, but she has long since stopped caring. It isn't her stench, after all, that has him intent on avoiding her.
On her side on his bed as she has been for hours, tucked away from him, Rey bores a hole into the wall with her stare. ]
They're mine.
[ Something, in all of this, that still feels like her own. She has no particular attachment beyond them other than recognizing it's among the few possessions that have followed her here. ]
[Kylo frowns down at her, like he doesn’t understand despite the bond managing to infer the attachment. After all, he did not ask her to purge them — just to change.]
They do not fit you. If you continue to wear them, you will force me to cut them off of you when you can’t get them off yourself.
[He glides to the table to drop her evening meal, seating himself and turning to stare at her. His eyes settle on a spot on the wall just above her head. He appears tired today, lacking his usual imperial air. His fingers tap out an anxious rhythm.]
Just change. You don’t need another reason to hate me.
[ Threatening to slice away her clothing in a theoretical situation isn't winning him any points. Rey's end of the bond recoils like a turtle slipping into its shell, refusing to be beckoned forth, at the mere suggestion.
After what he has done, it's callous to even invoke the imagery. ]
You can start by not talking about me with my clothes off. [ His absence makes her snappish, turning onto her back to shift her glower to him. He looks ... fatigued, depleted — it causes her only a moment of hesitation before she recounts every reason he has given her thus far. ] I want to wash before I change, and I want to do it alone.
[ Maybe she can leverage compliance to get what she wants — privacy, not being covered in her filth if he expects her to change. It's what she tells herself, at any rate; the alternative is believing her softness has returned in some small amount when she knows it is better off dead. Its resurgence would only mean more disappointment and pain.
For now, she ignores the food he has set out. Eating to avoid a force-feeding is not the same as having any appetite. ]
[He offers no hesitation at any of it, only waving his hand to unlock the bathroom for her from where he stands. Not long after, he descends into a seat and props his head up on the table. It's all very pedestrian and lazy, unlike the militant assassin he once had been. Eventually, his eyes slide back from the wall to her, and that same tired look remains plastered.
Whether or not he's given up, he makes no further vocalizations. For all his exhaustion, her plan to outlast his stubborn streak seems to be working. Something about his pale skin is vaguely green, on top of it all.]
Do as you like.
[Within reason, of course. She wouldn't be able to drown herself in there. If she took too long, he would check before she'd manage any substantial damage to herself, and now that the bond had been reestablished -- he would feel it all anyway.
But he couldn't afford to keep fighting the vitriol. He had to accept it for what it was, before Hux picked up on his weakness.]
[ The acquiescence comes so quickly — so nonplussed on top of it all — that Rey's first reaction is to blink owlishly. His marked lack of hesitation feels like a trap, truth be told, but she knows better. Knew him, at one point. Supreme Leader or not, Kylo Ren lacks the same shrewd streak of manipulation that had belonged to his former master. He has always felt too much and too deeply, like her, to be performative.
Or ... had. The lackadaisical indifference has her searching, gracelessly and remorselessly digging at his end of the bond, to be certain time has not misshapen him entirely. ]
You should take your own advice and eat. [ That comes after a lengthy pause, occupied by restoring feeling to her legs. Tiny pinpricks plague her as she grasps at the bedding just to balance herself as she stands, wobbly and unbalanced. ] You look like a corpse.
[ Says the woman who had looked like a husk not so long ago. It isn't concern, she tells herself, but it nags at something inside of her to see him ... sickly. Unmoved. Maybe he does want her gone, after all, but she reminds herself a moment later he would not go to great lengths to ensure she never harms herself if he was planning her execution.
Too stubborn to ask for help just yet, she stumbles, grasping at the table until her knuckles go white. Another bump sends her tilting into the wall, but for as pathetic and humiliating as the display is, it gives her an anchor to take her next few steps without falling as she slides along the metal lines of it. ]
[No thanks to her, of course. But it wasn't all Rey's fault. It was simply a symptom of the Dark Side, and how he repeatedly tugged upon it. Now might have been a good time to ask if she had looked in a mirror lately, but the wit simply isn't there. His choices had been poor in many stages of his life -- he was paying for them all now.
So be it. His goal was to live, and he was living. Husk or no husk.]
[ That's right. She had forgotten that he is not the man she remembers, not the man she had wanted. The twinge in her chest brings a new resurgence of grief with it — the same that floods her each time she wakes to cold, unforgiving reality and remembers what he had done. What she had become. What he had pushed her toward embracing, finally.
Like him, though not in the way he had wanted.
She pauses in her efforts, laborious breaths following the heavy rise and fall of her chest. ]
You don't look anything like I remember.
[ In her weaker moments, she had wondered. Struggled to envision him, even. It had not prepared her for a stranger. No, not a stranger. A shadow of Snoke, decaying and feeble despite the power he had harbored. Something mournful touches her voice, though she doesn't force herself to examine it. It would mean touching the soft parts of herself she has forgotten, that she had offered him: vulnerable, wanting to be seen. ]
It reminds me of your master. [ That face, too, has faded — but she had been glad for that. This brings her no joy, only hollow victory. She pauses at the 'fresher door. ] I don't like it.
[ He has shown he doesn't care for what she likes at all. It's the only confession she offers, and even that feels undeserved. She disappears around the corner, leaving the door open — better not to give him a reason to interrupt her — and tosses her clothing aside, turning away from the mirror behind her, as she leans over to fill the too-lavish bathtub his quarters possesses. ]
[It reminds me of your master is what does it. He cannot quite hold his unaffected posture until she is out of the room, but he makes a good go at it. The comparison to Snoke steals the guilty breath from his lungs -- it is only the lack of fitting in his now too-large tunic that hides the way his lungs shudder with acknowledgement of the truth.
He'd never wanted that -- to become like Snoke, to be Snoke, but it was no less true just because he refused to give it ample space in his mind. His relationship with his former master had been beneficial, but complicated. Too complicated, as he discovered too late. For all the affinity he felt for the Dark Side, his training with the former supreme leader -- it had changed him.
But that was the way it was, whether or not he liked it. Whether or not Rey liked it. It was the only way to keep the First Order running. It was the only way to keep Hux from spiraling out of control and coming down on the rest of the galaxy. He didn't expect her to understand that.
He sits down on the bed quietly without a verbal acknowledgement of what she has to say, but he takes the time to close his eyes and lean on the bond instead. If he couldn't watch with his eyes, then he'd at least make sure she wasn't doing anything he wouldn't approve of.]
[ In his flashes of guilt, she can almost mistake it for a glimpse of his long-buried humanity. It washes away like the streaks of dirt and sand that have crusted on her skin, receding into the steaming water. To believe there is some part of him not tainted by darkness, that is still worth saving, is ... precarious.
Dangerous. A threat to what she has convinced herself of for three years. Rey turns from it, averse to examining what discomforts her, and sinks down into the scalding warmth of the tub. It feels a waste, but she doesn't have the muscular fortitude to stand on her own two legs for fear of falling. More than that, it reminds her of what he had given up in pursuit of these luxuries, his prestige, the position of power he holds.
She can't hold onto that for long. The warmth is a balm to her stiff limbs and the deep-set ache in every bone, lapping at the mangled bracelet of bruises that have begun to form from his persistent need to bind the bird-like bones in her wrists and ankles. From Rey's side of the bond comes a strange flutter of contentment, the pour of simplistic relief as she droops into the water, eyelids fluttering closed.
It's the only comfort she has had in some time, however fleeting. Rey seizes it, so much so that she dozes off before she can finish scrubbing the grime — and blood, leftover from her attack on him, dotted across a band of freckles — from her collarbone. ]
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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.]
no subject
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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It hurts, all the same. Compartmentalizing herself, drifting away as she has learned to do in the three years that she has been alone with herself and her grief, does not lessen the physical sting or the reminder that Rey had wanted this with him — a long time ago, when his promise of not being alone had been soothed her. The sting of his teeth, sharp against the bruising imprint his fingertips left across her throat, allows her to concentrate there instead.
She closes her eyes, unresponsive — even when it looks like she might be, breath pausing only for her to inhale smoothly again. He makes that easy, too, fingers digging into the breast band that covers her chest. Makes it easy to prove her point that having a body does not mean having her. ]
... It won't work.
[ She says, finally, like a ragdoll as her head falls to the side. She should know. She has tried, after all, with herself. With another. Malnutrition has turned her underweight, made her too small and unable to lubricate well. The thought only brings her back to food, the meal he had spilled; despite his claims, she is certain he will be the thing to kill her with misery and neglect, unable to even remember to keep her alive. ]
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[That comes unbidden against his will. He needs it to work -- they both do, as far as he is concerned. He is not going to pretend he has any idea of how to force the issue, but he's definitely going to try. He takes the sharp inhales as cues, working whatever he can manage to get some kind of response out of her. His desperation is palpable, searching for some kind of relief from his own self destruction -- continuing to ruin and destroy everything he touches.
He does note that her breasts are smaller than he remembers. All of her seems different, now that he is this close. If he wasn't so sure of her Force signature (and how much she viscerally resists him in every way possible), he might have wondered if he picked up the wrong woman.
So, concluding that working at her breasts is a useless venture for both of them. That hand goes south instead, working to undo her pants.]
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Challenging him had been a mistake, she realizes, for how it has only fueled his desperation to turn away from the truth. She doesn't shy from it, reiterating with a new hardness, ]
It won't. [ He doesn't know her body any better than she does. Rey resents the mere suggestion. ] I'm too small.
[ Once he gets her pants free, there is proof to that claim. The spur of her hips is a sharp protrusion, jutting out like it might break free from her skin. Her hand grips his wrist, suddenly, clamping her finger into the bone to get his attention. ]
Do you really hate me so much that you would do this to me?
[ It isn't a ploy — not fully one, at least, for how quietly the question comes. ]
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It's her words that get him once she sees how much she has slimmed down -- he still needed to do the work of getting hard, a task that was already going to prove to be monumental, without needing to pass this barrier as well.
He is too weak to kill her, too feeble to fuck her, and too cruel to hope to earn any real affection from her. Bringing her back was a mistake.
And yet, as he brushes calloused hands briefly and experimentally between the folds of her skin, he finds he has to lift his hand and look away. The guilt, the shame, the truth that he is desperate and pathetic and that he lost crushing him and his voice into something small.
Your mother didn't raise you this way a mocking voice he's nearly forgotten picks at him, bile rushing up his throat.]
I wish that I hated you more.
[He drops her pants back over her pelvis to give her back some modesty before turning away to clean up the mess he'd made when he'd attacked her in the first place.]
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So do I.
[ If he were not a coward, if he could grant her the compassion of an escape, she would not still be trapped — would not still be breathing. More than that, it would more clearly define him as a monster, incapable of the iota of empathy that reminds her too vividly of Ben Solo.
But Ben Solo hadn't wanted her, either. Had eventually hated her, she thinks, to have destroyed so much of what she had loved. As much as she had not wanted him to touch her, it's almost debasing that Kylo Ren could not go through with touching her, too, repulsed by what he had seen of her — the ways she has destroyed herself in her attempts to destroy him. Moisture dribbles down the slopes of her cheekbones and mucus clogs her throat, choking wetly on the start of her tears.
Seeing what he has become makes it all feel too final. A reality, rather than the waking nightmare she has floated through. She had not been wrong to believe herself well and truly alone. It feels like mourning a loss all over again, now that he has confirmed what she had already known. Of course he had not cared for her, even if he could still not bring himself to give her the full brunt of his loathing.
Through her blurring vision, she rises feebly to her feet. He couldn't even spare her the humiliation of fumbling with her clothing, too weak to stand on her feet, bow-legged and shaking with exertion and emotion. Her chest rattles with the sobs she doesn't want to unleash, a quiet but ugly affair for how she sniffles through snot, threatening to bowl her over as she shakily tries to step into a pant leg. It's pitiful, pathetic; she hates him for that, too. ]
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He leaves after that without much of a word. He returns sometime later with another meal and a fresh canteen, but he does not linger in the room. Her mere presence makes him want to drop to his knees and howl in agony -- so he can't stay for long. It would only be a matter of time before Armitage started asking questions, prodding at his weakness in hopes to take command of the First Order. He could not let that happen.
And so the pattern continues. Kylo Ren, it seems, isn't so bad at keeping a pet. It keeps him on a schedule, though he makes no overtures about attempting to bond with her anymore.
She is bound when he is not in the room and when he is sleeping, unable to trust that she won't simply try to kill herself or him when he dares not to look. When she starts to put on some weight, he brings new garb -- standard issue officer fare.]
Unless you prefer to be bare.
[He drops the hat unceremoniously on top with the rest. It is the most he's said to her in some time.]
It makes no difference to me.
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Even relieving herself is often a feat of exertion. Another badge of humiliation to add to the list for how he has forced her to rely on him in that way, waiting for him to return and untie her like a pet, just so she can feel human for short-lived moments.
And through it all, she knows he is too much of a coward to truly look at her. To acknowledge her. To him, she is just a fixture in a room, easily forgotten. Rey makes no move to strike a conversation even on the days he does lower himself to speak to her, gone voluntarily mute, and there are no guards he seems to trust near her that would give her any outlet.
That's okay, Rey decides. She is too used to the loss of human contact, to being alone, to break under those conditions — but she cannot say she does not begrudge him for his avoidance, either. Resentment festers, swinging uncomfortably between rage and numb acceptance of his behavior, feeling like she has been abandoned once again; it is precisely why she does not leap to greet him, to even face him, when he finally speaks more than a single grunt or syllable to her now.
The silence endures so long that it gives the impression she doesn't intend to speak at all, but there is no concealing the way she mentally flinches in the bond. Time has passed, but she remembers all too clearly the last time she had been bare beneath him. He has forgotten, she thinks, or has merely leveraged her grief over it as a means of getting her into what he wants. ]
I like my clothes.
[ She offers that, finally, small and faraway like a regressive child — and she might be, returning to old habits, scratching marks with bloodied, dulling nails into the refresher's walls when she gets free for long enough. Maybe he has a point; she has not changed from her own, has not stripped for the spray of the 'fresher. She must stink by now, but she has long since stopped caring. It isn't her stench, after all, that has him intent on avoiding her.
On her side on his bed as she has been for hours, tucked away from him, Rey bores a hole into the wall with her stare. ]
They're mine.
[ Something, in all of this, that still feels like her own. She has no particular attachment beyond them other than recognizing it's among the few possessions that have followed her here. ]
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[Kylo frowns down at her, like he doesn’t understand despite the bond managing to infer the attachment. After all, he did not ask her to purge them — just to change.]
They do not fit you. If you continue to wear them, you will force me to cut them off of you when you can’t get them off yourself.
[He glides to the table to drop her evening meal, seating himself and turning to stare at her. His eyes settle on a spot on the wall just above her head. He appears tired today, lacking his usual imperial air. His fingers tap out an anxious rhythm.]
Just change. You don’t need another reason to hate me.
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[ Threatening to slice away her clothing in a theoretical situation isn't winning him any points. Rey's end of the bond recoils like a turtle slipping into its shell, refusing to be beckoned forth, at the mere suggestion.
After what he has done, it's callous to even invoke the imagery. ]
You can start by not talking about me with my clothes off. [ His absence makes her snappish, turning onto her back to shift her glower to him. He looks ... fatigued, depleted — it causes her only a moment of hesitation before she recounts every reason he has given her thus far. ] I want to wash before I change, and I want to do it alone.
[ Maybe she can leverage compliance to get what she wants — privacy, not being covered in her filth if he expects her to change. It's what she tells herself, at any rate; the alternative is believing her softness has returned in some small amount when she knows it is better off dead. Its resurgence would only mean more disappointment and pain.
For now, she ignores the food he has set out. Eating to avoid a force-feeding is not the same as having any appetite. ]
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[He offers no hesitation at any of it, only waving his hand to unlock the bathroom for her from where he stands. Not long after, he descends into a seat and props his head up on the table. It's all very pedestrian and lazy, unlike the militant assassin he once had been. Eventually, his eyes slide back from the wall to her, and that same tired look remains plastered.
Whether or not he's given up, he makes no further vocalizations. For all his exhaustion, her plan to outlast his stubborn streak seems to be working. Something about his pale skin is vaguely green, on top of it all.]
Do as you like.
[Within reason, of course. She wouldn't be able to drown herself in there. If she took too long, he would check before she'd manage any substantial damage to herself, and now that the bond had been reestablished -- he would feel it all anyway.
But he couldn't afford to keep fighting the vitriol. He had to accept it for what it was, before Hux picked up on his weakness.]
Just do it quickly.
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Or ... had. The lackadaisical indifference has her searching, gracelessly and remorselessly digging at his end of the bond, to be certain time has not misshapen him entirely. ]
You should take your own advice and eat. [ That comes after a lengthy pause, occupied by restoring feeling to her legs. Tiny pinpricks plague her as she grasps at the bedding just to balance herself as she stands, wobbly and unbalanced. ] You look like a corpse.
[ Says the woman who had looked like a husk not so long ago. It isn't concern, she tells herself, but it nags at something inside of her to see him ... sickly. Unmoved. Maybe he does want her gone, after all, but she reminds herself a moment later he would not go to great lengths to ensure she never harms herself if he was planning her execution.
Too stubborn to ask for help just yet, she stumbles, grasping at the table until her knuckles go white. Another bump sends her tilting into the wall, but for as pathetic and humiliating as the display is, it gives her an anchor to take her next few steps without falling as she slides along the metal lines of it. ]
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[No thanks to her, of course. But it wasn't all Rey's fault. It was simply a symptom of the Dark Side, and how he repeatedly tugged upon it. Now might have been a good time to ask if she had looked in a mirror lately, but the wit simply isn't there. His choices had been poor in many stages of his life -- he was paying for them all now.
So be it. His goal was to live, and he was living. Husk or no husk.]
The meal is for you.
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Like him, though not in the way he had wanted.
She pauses in her efforts, laborious breaths following the heavy rise and fall of her chest. ]
You don't look anything like I remember.
[ In her weaker moments, she had wondered. Struggled to envision him, even. It had not prepared her for a stranger. No, not a stranger. A shadow of Snoke, decaying and feeble despite the power he had harbored. Something mournful touches her voice, though she doesn't force herself to examine it. It would mean touching the soft parts of herself she has forgotten, that she had offered him: vulnerable, wanting to be seen. ]
It reminds me of your master. [ That face, too, has faded — but she had been glad for that. This brings her no joy, only hollow victory. She pauses at the 'fresher door. ] I don't like it.
[ He has shown he doesn't care for what she likes at all. It's the only confession she offers, and even that feels undeserved. She disappears around the corner, leaving the door open — better not to give him a reason to interrupt her — and tosses her clothing aside, turning away from the mirror behind her, as she leans over to fill the too-lavish bathtub his quarters possesses. ]
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He'd never wanted that -- to become like Snoke, to be Snoke, but it was no less true just because he refused to give it ample space in his mind. His relationship with his former master had been beneficial, but complicated. Too complicated, as he discovered too late. For all the affinity he felt for the Dark Side, his training with the former supreme leader -- it had changed him.
But that was the way it was, whether or not he liked it. Whether or not Rey liked it. It was the only way to keep the First Order running. It was the only way to keep Hux from spiraling out of control and coming down on the rest of the galaxy. He didn't expect her to understand that.
He sits down on the bed quietly without a verbal acknowledgement of what she has to say, but he takes the time to close his eyes and lean on the bond instead. If he couldn't watch with his eyes, then he'd at least make sure she wasn't doing anything he wouldn't approve of.]
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Dangerous. A threat to what she has convinced herself of for three years. Rey turns from it, averse to examining what discomforts her, and sinks down into the scalding warmth of the tub. It feels a waste, but she doesn't have the muscular fortitude to stand on her own two legs for fear of falling. More than that, it reminds her of what he had given up in pursuit of these luxuries, his prestige, the position of power he holds.
She can't hold onto that for long. The warmth is a balm to her stiff limbs and the deep-set ache in every bone, lapping at the mangled bracelet of bruises that have begun to form from his persistent need to bind the bird-like bones in her wrists and ankles. From Rey's side of the bond comes a strange flutter of contentment, the pour of simplistic relief as she droops into the water, eyelids fluttering closed.
It's the only comfort she has had in some time, however fleeting. Rey seizes it, so much so that she dozes off before she can finish scrubbing the grime — and blood, leftover from her attack on him, dotted across a band of freckles — from her collarbone. ]
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