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WISHLIST (TROS SPOILERS)

anything force-bond related, but especially:

slow-burn corruption (either direction)

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.

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[ it is always hard to come home. that's what it feels like, setting foot in this open sore of a port. canto bight has always been the shining star of cantonica, but not to kira. as the supreme leader had been all too eager to remind her, the last time she had set foot here, she was still rey, a child lost in the wilds of jakku. a scavenger. nothing.

the supreme leader was wrong about one thing: she was not afraid to confront the place her parents had sold her. that day, those people, that girl she had been held no sway over her anymore.

and even if they did … there were matters of greater import here than her own fears. ]

Cover every port and hangar in this city. I want to know about every ship that enters the atmosphere.

[ she says it as soon as her black boots click on the marble floors of the casino, turning to address the masked troopers to her side. one of them — he must be new to command — turns towards her to ask, What will you do? the others flinch. they can feel the anger thrumming under her skin, the tension that winds into her just being here. they know better.

there is no emotion in her face as she lifts her hand. he sinks to his knees, his choked gasps amplified by the speaker in his helmet. the others do not flinch. only when he crumples does she release her phantom grip. the others salute and go about their business, one of them taking the risk to carry his fallen comrade.

he might live, this stormtrooper. if they bother to bring him back to the command shuttle. if he does, he'll have learned his lesson. she pulls back the hood on her thick, black woollen cape and lets it hang around her shoulders as she gets a good look now at the casino floor.

someone in this bauble of a town is arming the resistance. kira strides like a wraith across the casino floor, the loose skirts of her tunic a whip of black fabric in her wake. her shadow is barely noticed by the elites who gamble away their pocket change. and she does not think about how many of those bets are more than the supreme leader had paid to get his hands on her all those years ago.

it's stifling.

but somewhere in this blasted, beautiful city there is a seed of hope and she is going to snuff it out. ]

[yeah, yeah, boo hoo canto bight is a den of deceit and phonies and whatever rose said while she was being holden caulfield but you know what? the resistance is low on literally everything. supplies, ships, bodies, you name it. leia has a few connections left to try and reach out to, and this particular one wanted to meet at canto bight. so she sent poe to do the job. he's not exactly thrilled to be here, since it is a den of deceit and phonies, but he can put aside his personal feelings to do things for the resistance. ~the resistance is all that matters.~

and, unlike rose and finn, he's doing it right. he cleaned up, found (read: stole) appropriate formalwear, didn't park his ship in a no-parking zone. bb-8 is waiting on the ship for him, but he's sure he can handle this on his own.

or at least that's what he thought until he saw kylo ren across the casino. he's very hard to miss, on account of being a literal tree. but maybe … it'll be fine. maybe they'll ignore each other. maybe he'll ignore his innate desire to always Start Some Shit.

yep. that's definitely what's going to happen. i can just feel it.]

[ the first weeks upon their return from hathaway's service had been ... rocky. snoke's death, and shortly thereafter luke skywalker's, had destabilized both the first order and the resistance. it was thrawn's guidance, not kylo ren, who had been the one to show them how to re-establish order.

as it turned out, kylo ren's ability for strategem capped out at "point every gun we have at that man." even rey could see the lack of wisdom in such a tactic.

from there, it had been easy to enlist her into the service of the first order. she had seen a need, and a power that if properly controlled might really do what thrawn had suggested it might. improve the galaxy. she knew little, yet, of politics and diplomacy, but she had the heart of a resistance fighter and the position of the now-deposed supreme leader ren and the prowess of her closest advisor, thrawn.

with these, she could do anything.

even bring poe, finn, and the remainder of the resistance to heel when they'd tried to turn against her, afraid that she had been lost to the promise of power. it had hurt her, but by the time it was through, she had seen the necessity. the ends justified the unsavory means by which she had been forced to persuade them.

the new empire — the first order carried too many unpleasant connotations, a reminder of another time — had begun to lay roots down on naboo. the heart of the old democracy, now the heart of the new empire. rey keeps busy for the most part, making arrangements, meeting with thrawn, learning. she is hungry to learn, eager to listen, more eager to do right by these far planets so far out of her reach. the sort of place where she had grown up.

they're distant now. half-forgotten.

she steps into the throne room — her intent is to get moving, remind herself of where she is and how far they've come and how far there is yet to go. ben's grandmother had once sat on that throne. she could remember poe telling her stories of dresses that leia had always imagined her grandchildren might wear. this place must hold — not memories, no, but something for him.

she's not surprised to find him here without her, but it does leave an oily unease sinking in her lungs. she does not want to watch her back for knives from him of all people. ]

What are you doing here?

[ Strictly speaking, the girl is nothing.

By all rights she shouldn't be, at least. Rey Sand had been born in Dorne, or so she'd been told before she'd been sold as a servant to a lordling in the Saltpans who'd set her to raiding the Trident for old war artifacts and, at the start of the war, stealing off King Snoke's armies who'd come through to clear out the last of House Organa.

She'd spent her life a vulture, picking the remains of corpses on the battlefields and making her living off the hard-earned purses of good soldiers when the war had escalated. At first she'd taken it as none of her business — it wasn't going to feed her, after all.

But then the Kingsguard had come through, all shiny and golden and unlike those other coarse soldiers. There'd had to be some reason they were so set on House Organa. And it had been Rey who, upon seeing a messenger fleeing Riverrun's direction, had taken them in to an old abandoned millhouse. And Rey who had discovered that he'd born a missive wearing the Lady Organa's seal.

Secrets. Secrets and politics and everything she knew nothing about. But she'd taken that scrap of a letter and the mission to get it to her allies in King's Landing and she'd run. Forgotten all about Lord Plutt and the Saltpans and the bodies she'd picked free and loaded up with her chest wrapped on a wagon headed for the port in Storm's End. They'd go to Essos from there to be sold to slavers.

No Kingsguard would ever care about what slavers were doing at a time like this, surely. They'd never look there, surely, for whatever missive Lady Organa had sent out. And Rey could get off in the Kingswood and make her way quietly into King's Landing to deliver it securely into the hands of one of Lady Organa's allies.

Propped against the cart where they'd stopped to rest, she popped open the wax seal. She'd be able to melt it back down — she'd practiced — but if she was going to risk her neck for this thing, she'd see what it contained, thank you. It was serious enough that the messenger, Finn, had run off and washed his hands of it.

Whose life was it really worth? A message couldn't save House Organa from the crushing grip of King Snoke's forces. That would take … a miracle.

She stared down at the script. It was clean. The sort of print a lady would have. Rey, by contrast, could scarcely read it, but she was nevertheless positive of what it said: Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker, Prince of Dorne and the Seven bloody Kingdoms, presumed dead, had been found in Essos.

Rey cursed. Loudly. She was bloody dead, holding a thing like that.

A runner returned to the camp, rustling through the brush, and she leapt to her feet. They'd found tracks. These woods were being patrolled — bandits, one of them suspected, but Rey knew better. Rey knew. There were no bandits near the Kingswood. And there were plenty of reasons to track a cart of slavers out of Riverrun if word had is that news of where to find Luke Skywalker, the only threat to King Snoke's claim, had slipped loose in the hands of some pitiful bastard girl. ]

[ He'd escaped.

Somehow, it leaves Rey more unhinged than before she had encountered him, and not only for the way Snoke had punished for her the failure. She still bore the burns, crawling up her neck like a red and fleshy disease. She is ordered to leave it alone, to keep her focus on the Resistance, but there is no overselling Rey's grudge.

He had made her look a fool. Untrained and scrambling and — And he'd gotten under her skin, worst of all. She could excuse the rest. He had all that she did not: bloodline. Of course he would be a powerful Jedi, more powerful if he ever decided to train. But … The way they had connected made her feel weak and afraid. Worse, it made her feel cowardly for staying at Snoke's heels.

It did not make her want to follow orders and leave him alone. It made her want to find him, and — It takes her some time to put words to that and, but eventually she settles on bringing him with her. Turning him. Teaching her in her ways, Snoke's ways.

She touches the burn at her neck and winces. Still not healed.

The shuttle lands on Ryloth. The Resistance was said to be hidden there, under a sympathetic twi'lek leadership that feared occupation. It was no wonder that there were women with blasters there to greet her. It was probably every blaster they possessed in their village, and not a one of them would have done any good. ]

If I were coming to attack you, I'd bring more than one shuttle.

[It had been raining for nearly a week, and suffice to say that Kylo Ren was tired of staying indoors -- even with the curfew in place and various areas of the lower city beginning to flood. They just couldn't drain the water fast enough. It is one of the few things keeping him from busting out into the streets: they couldn't afford to leave their newly found safe space until they absolutely needed to. Once they opened the door, it would flood up their calves and the space would be unusable.

Of course, it was convenient now -- with their names plastered as fugitives and the rest of Ophelia separated from them, the flood was the only thing keeping the Vakdir from chasing them down into the slums. It bought them time to mess with the tech they had stolen...or, it would have, if they hadn't been told not to activate it.

Kylo Ren cannot help his urge to pace, scratching at the presently useless magitek around his neck.]

The second we leave, they are going to be on us again.

[He is stating the obvious, of course -- but he'd never been cramped in one spot in his adult life for so long, let alone with another person. He does not know what to do but state the obvious. It's dark. It's cold. It's damp. And they are being hunted like animals.]

Do you know how long we have been down here?

[ The Resistance's forces had never recovered from their devastating loss.

Brave souls would rally to their cause. Leia had reassured her of that despite the grim line of her mouth, the shaking in her fingertips, leaving Rey to wonder if the consolation had been aimed toward her or Leia's own method of coping with her life's work falling apart. With each hopeless rejection that came, whittling away at their chances.

No planet was bold enough to ally with them. No government was willing to offer its resources for fear of the First Order's might. Leia's faith had weakened, her resolve dwindling with her health, and Rey had been forced to watch her wither away — a beacon of rebellion reduced to a shell of what she once was. Gone, just like her dream of peace.

They had fought in spite of it — because of it. The losses, Rey told herself, had to matter, could not be in vain.

Until they were. Until the First Order, stalwart and flourishing, had found them. The years could not soften the memory of ash and smoke stinging at her eyes, the copper tang of blood in the air, the strewn bodies across ravaged terrain, the void in the Force that told her the Resistance had been run into extinction. Each night, it projected itself across her mind like a gruesome, inescapable holo.

In the end, she had run. The Last Jedi, the last surviving tie to the Resistance. The last glimmer of hope, if she did not grieve with the weight of what had been taken from her. Returning to her lonely existence once more, worse for how she now knew the taste of companionship.

The Doaba Badlands served as a painful, purposeful reminder of what Kylo Ren had stolen from her. Desolate, barren, as Jakku had been. The people of Soccoro did not blink twice at her, more often than not — unable to recognize her, she thought (how could she fault them when she hardly recognized herself?), from the picture in her bounty. Those that had did not return to their ships with their minds intact, unable to tell stories of the woman that lived beyond the city walls, dwelling in the desert like an exile.

Kylo Ren would not find her here. Three years of survival — because she knew nothing else, because she had not been able to do anything but continue — had assured her of that, no matter how desperate his attempts to locate her had become. No matter the Force poisoning her, infecting her — forcing her to become more sickly with distance, punishing her for her resistance, until even walking into the city without collapsing had become a monumental feat. Maybe, Rey thought bitterly, it would kill them both. A fitting end for them both.

She had nothing else to give him. Nothing else she could, or would, give.

That remained true, even on the day he found her. Time had passed, but Rey could still sense the nearness — vibrating in the threads of the Force like a warning. Gooseflesh seizes her arms, breath wrenched in her lungs, but Rey's pace quickens regardless — pulling at her cloak until her hood obscures her countenance, weaving through the crowd in her haste to wander back into Socorro's wastelands. ]

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i'm here for some kind of jedi/smuggler/resistance ben + canto bight