[Rey starts contorting herself to continue to undress and Kylo Ren comes to terms woth the fact that he isnt quite ready to watch this display. So, he quietly swallows and disappears into the refresher before Rey can finish undressing and closes the door behind him.
Inside, he stares at himself in the mirror — pale, gaunt, and clearly anxious. His eyes look more sunken than usual, and his nose has turned red from the outdoor abuse. He watches himself swallow a few more times before he refocuses and washes his face with a quick splash of hot water. He then grabs one of the many towels to run it under the faucet. He wrings it out carefully and opens the door again after steeling himself for what is likely on the other side.]
Stop moving. You’re making it worse.
[He holds out the towel, wet and drapped between his hands in both offerinf and asking for permission.]
[ To his great fortune, in the time he took in the bathroom, Rey managed to remove … her boots and a single sock. So she's standing by the table, one foot up on the chair with the sock still attached, her plain bra and a pair of soaked-through black pants sparing him from further discomfort.
His words take a moment to sink in simply because their intent is so foreign, coming out of him. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. She takes care of him. (What a wild and wacky world they live in from the offset, where that's a sentence accepted as normal.) He doesn't understand the utility of that kind of sentiment, so he eschews it, and she has to beat him into taking care of his own damn body, which is only about half as counterintuitive as it sounds. But this is him offering it to her in kind.
Maybe he has been paying attention.
Her gaze drops to the towel in his hand, and reluctantly, she pulls her foot off the seat of the chair without removing her sad remaining sock. She nods to him her assent, but she's left not quite sure what to do with her body when he'd told her to stop moving and he's so much taller than her in the first place.
So she just stares up stupidly at him, looking the part of a drowned cat, her shivering making her look small. ]
[Don’t give him too much credit, Rey. He has to live with you still.
He also hadn’t expected her to listen so well, so there is a long moment where he forgets where he was going with that command. But, eventually, he pulls over a seat from the sad dining set and nods to it. Its not a perfect fix, but he isn’t going to stand there and hold a towel for her while the burn heals. He hands her the warm towel (imagining that it would dull her shivering some) and turns to fetch another. This one, he wets in the sink with cold water.
When he comes back, he pauses to look behind her, wondering how to even...voice his idea. Why is he doing this? Even he isn’t totally sure — it just feels correct.
So he mistakenly does not use his words when he kneels down to press the cold directly to the burn at her back, doing his best not to look at her face qhen he does it.]
[ He pulls the chair over and shoves the towel into her hands and then he's just … gone. Somehow it's bewildering and makes perfect sense at the same time; it's so stunted and awkward, but that's just … how Ben Solo is. She settles down onto the chair, the warm wet towel in her hand, and she presses it to her shoulders to soothe away some of the bone-deep chill that has hit her.
It's not a shower, but it's a nice middle-ground given that she should probably wouldn't want the shower spraying directly on the burn like this anyway. She's minding her own business like this when she feels him approach, turning to look up at him.
When he kneels, it's a little alarming. Humbling in a way — on his part, not hers. It makes her feel … she doesn't know what. But there's something tight in her chest to see him crouching to attend to her; he's not the ominous, looming monster that everyone wants to make him out to be. That he wants to make himself out to be.
The cold compress touches her skin and she sucks in a breath, both at the temperature and at the direct contact with her injury. Goosebumps prickle across her skin, and she straightens a little, reacting bodily to the sudden contact. Her fingernails dig into the warm towel in front of her and the act squeezes drops of warm water out into her lap, soaked up immediately by her pants.
That inhale comes from something else too, loaded with sudden awareness of his proximity and her bare skin, like there's some complex formula that factors in his closeness and the surface area of unclothed skin and right now it's all out of balance. ]
Cold.
[ She utters reluctantly, as though afraid admitting as much will make him pull his hand away. Reaching one hand up, she summons the mostly dry towel he'd handed her in the elevator into her hand and pulls it around her shoulders. There. Maybe that'll help on multiple fronts. She thinks this, but glancing down to watch him, she doesn't believe it. ]
[He feels her react, and he further detaches as he so often does, refusing to engage the intimacy of what he’s done or the intent behind it. Its just easier not to think about any of it at all.
But what he gets instead is him simply...staying there for a few silent seconds, too caught up in the corner he’d pinned himself in. He’d been so high on anxiety that he had forgotten to think before reacting and now Rey was reading into it. He could sense it without even needing to look for it.
He awkwardly clears his throat.]
Yes. Its a burn.
[Helpful as ever. His voice is quiet, and he very suddenly feels the need to pull away — like a child who had approached a large animal for the first time and suddenly wants to be very far away from it.
So, he rearrages the towel some so it rests against both the burn and the back of the chair and starts to pull away, tucking his long legs underneath himsef so that he can stand.]
She exhales, flooded with both relief and disappointment. The grip she holds on the towel around her shoulders loosens. She slumps a little back into the chair, using her weight to pin the cold towel in place even as the coarse fabric of the towel now irritates the sensitive skin of her burn.
Some part of her wonders over whether she should apologize, but she doesn't know what she did wrong to make him withdraw, or if it's even a matter of right moves and wrong moves. More likely he'd never even thought about it at all.
That thought makes her chest tighten in stifling denial.
There is still the matter of the pain. It's not just the burn; she can feel that. There's bruising under it that the cold is helping to suppress but not correct. It's probably not broken. Probably. ]
I can wait. [ She reaches up to indicate the towel around her shoulders as she turns to look up at him. ] If you want to use the 'fresher. [ Giving him a task seems like a kindness, but for who? She's taking mental inventory. She has sterilizing wipes and painkillers still. They'll help with this once the cold towel has sufficiently numbed her. ]
[He nods once and moves toward the refresher as relief floods through his veins. As it turns out, her instincts are correct — the task is simple and merciful, perfect for a man who can’t seem to come down off his anxiety high.
Really, it hardly has anything to do with her. A lot had happened today — they’d nearly been caught, he was on the run for the first time ever, and he’d managed not to kill anyone.
The water doesn’t turn on for some time even after he disappears behind the door. Something is eating at him, something he can’t pinpoint or define, and its causing him to lapse in memory. But eventually, the water comes on with a groan of the old pipes, and he goes through his usual routine (its mostly conditioning all of that hair).
But once the automatic shut off triggers, he stays inside and sits in the basin to brood to himself, uncomfortably picking at hang nails and listening to someone speak on the level below him. Eavesdropping mundane conversations with the Force]
[ While he's inside, she busies herself. Slowly she peels off her other sock and her toes wriggle, grateful to be free of the damp. Maybe she won't get hypothermic after all. She drops it into the pile of her wet clothes. The pants go next, and she leaves the wet towel behind to head to her bag for something to wipe the injury down with.
When it's clean, she pops painkillers and … stews.
It's a lot to process. At least she's alone now, so when she feels the shuddering exhale of relief that she's not captured and on her way to a quiet and forgettable death, she knows no one can see. Maybe she's not so unlike him, hiding her weakness until it's easy for her to process.
She wrings her hair out on the pile of clothes and then wraps the mostly dry towel around her, as much to dry her undergarments and body as to anticipate the fact that she'd heard the water shut off.
Not that it'd make a difference to him if she hadn't.
And then he doesn't even come out anyway. She settles back onto that chair, trying to keep the skin of her ribs from stretching even though any way she sits seems to make the wound itch. At least the worst of the pain is fading, between the numbness and the painkillers kicking in. ]
[Somewhere in between all of that, Kylo had begun to bite his nails while brooding over his own thought process. The mission wasn’t even close to done as far as he could see; they hadn’t even found the shard yet. How much longer were they going to try and help? How soon before he could escape this moral conundrum?
Eventually, he reimerges. Given the fact that he is kicking out his wet clothes with one foot, and both hands are holding a towel at his waist, he hadn’t really thought this whole process through. He’ll...address that once she is out of the room. He doesn’t look much more at ease in spite of the relaxation time he supposedly took — in fact, he almost looks worse.
He should probably ask if she needs more help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he engages in a staring contest, waiting for her to take the room he had left open for her.]
[ She gets to her feet when she hears the door open and then it's staring contest central. In fact, make that double because Rey is trying very hard to keep her eyes on his and not anywhere else. Her lips part with the intent to make sound but none comes out.
For a moment, at least.
Then she shuts her eyes and shakes her head to dismiss … all of that. It's not the real matter at hand here. And Ben, he doesn't look great. He's clearly out of it. Has been since he'd thrown those guards into the wall. ]
[Do they have to do this right now? Rather than answer Rey, he kicks his clothes to the side again.]
Nothing.
[But then he seems to remember that he's staring and turns away from her like clockwork to continue getting out of the way. Rooming with Rey, as it turned out, was way more than he was prepared for.
Or maybe further engaging Rey's compassion was the real mistake. Everything he does feels raw and uncomfortable.]
[ She doesn't budge, even when he does. What seems like it should mean that she won instead leaves her feeling dismissed, but she's too stubborn to just let it lie. Some alarm sound in the back of her mind warns her that she'd been just as persistent at Doro's castle, and that had led to trouble, but —
This isn't the same as that. Or she tells herself that anyway.
She's still cold. She really should get in the shower just to warm herself up, keep herself from getting sick, but instead she's digging her heels in. Perhaps because he'd talked to her so openly after what happened to Odinson, it bothers her more that he closes off now.
It's nothing she did wrong. Rey's sure of that because she hadn't done anything. He'd been off since they fought the Vakdir outside that mall. It only culminated in this. ]
[He lets her call him on his lie, but supplies her with another non-answer in return. Its the best words to describe what he's dealing with, something that he really doesn't know the origin of. He knows that he is bothered -- but the lines have become so blurred that he doesn't know why.
The conflict of it makes him ill, and being fully aware of the unsatisfied rage buried somewhere deep in his chest makes him all the more uneasy.]
You should be more concerned about your wound.
[Like he is??? For some reason??? He shoves that out of his mind.]
[ He's distracting her, she thinks. Or himself, maybe. ]
Like you are, every time you get injured?
[ This, frank and sarcastic, comes in the tune of a call-out. Not to point out the way he prioritizes her, but rather to suggest her doubt of how genuine it is. If he hadn't been so persistent in dismissing her concern over his injuries, maybe she'd be more convinced. ]
Suddenly pain matters to you because it's mine and not yours?
[ Never mind that the pain is mostly suppressed right now by a combination of medication and lingering numbness from that cold towel. She'd already handled it as best they could, here.
She starts to draw towards him but catches herself in recognition that they're a barely clothed mess right now and decides maybe physical contact isn't what this already incendiary mixture needs. So she draws that hand she'd reached towards his shoulder back and drops it at her side.
Bubbling up in her chest she finally recognizes that his 'don't feel well' only serves to make her more nervous. She knows how volatile he is, so that could mean a lot of things. The right answer is probably not poke the bear, but here she is, unable to stop poking the bear. ]
[He has nothing to say to that -- because she's right, of course. The pain shouldn't matter, to her or to him. But ... it does, for a reason he can't seem to puzzle out. That's the root of the problem: recognition that his feelings towards some things are changing, and being unable to remember how to go back to how he used to be.
So he swallows down his silence and moves toward the couch, adjusting the towel around his waist to make sure he remains covered when he sits. He really wants to put some actual clothes on, but he's not quite brave enough right now to attempt that while Rey is still in the room.
Too much self reflection. He's like an overstimulated puppy.
Once he is planted on the couch, he reaches out to call a dry towel into his hand to lay over his torso. He suddenly recognizes the urge to call another to cover his face, to shut out the world around him.]
Suddenly straightening, Rey stares at the back of his head and finds herself feeling rather stupid. His sentimental offering from before comes back in echo. Rey, telling him she wasn't exceptional, and Kylo insisting that she was to him.
She'd been right in placing when he'd begun to act strangely, and terribly blind to the cause. It wasn't the fight with the Vakdir. It was the fact that one of them had hurt her. That she'd been distracted by the pain and the mission didn't mitigate her sudden brush with humility, realizing she'd been pushing buttons when the answer was obvious.
Assuming it was only his worry about her felt too self-important, but there's definitely a root of it there that he'd admitting through … not denying it. That's very much a response that says 'Yes, it is different, and let's just leave it at that.' And that leaves her feeling weird enough to let it alone.
What does she do with that? Uncertainty only pins her to her spot for a minute. He might have the best idea, to just let it alone and give him a chance to process. She turns to head into the fresher without another word. ]
[The second Rey is behind the door, Kylo Ren makes it his business to put some fucking pants on. Its not easy because he's still a little damp, but he's not about to feed into this any more than he already is.
Once he is properly covered, he moves toward the bed with a dry towel, folding it up and throwing it on the nearest pillow so that he can stretch out and cover his eyes with his arms. He just. Needs a minute. Several minutes.
Was this what Loki was talking about? Not always doing what was expected of him? Was it supposed to feel this awful, or was that just because he had already mired himself so deeply in the Dark side? He exhales, long and slow, to push it all out of his mind. If he didn't examine it, then he didn't have to worry about the changes that were occurring. So long as Rey was willing to leave it alone too.
He barely resists the urge to pick his head up when he hears the refresher door open again.]
[ When she's shut behind the door, Rey hazards a glance in the mirror. Seeing her hair clinging down around her neck, the paleness of blood retreating from her skin to save her warmth, it reminds her of that place under the island. She reaches up, fingertips dragging across the glass, where fog still lingers from Ben's shower.
Down there, that place had told her that she was alone. That her answers were in herself, not in some legacy that she imagined was good, warm people who she'd be reunited with one day. That child's fantasy was gone. In replacing it, and arriving at terms with Ben, she'd found a new interpretation of that vision. That maybe it wasn't about being alone at all, but being enough on her own. Nobody, yes, but not nothing.
She takes off her magitek and leaves it on the counter, grimacing as she strips off her undergarments because it stretches the skin of her back, where the burn is and puts pressure on her ribs beneath by shifting them around with the movement of her shoulders.
That was what Thrawn had told her. She wrestles with it now because she wants to see truth in it but she also suspects that some of it at least was an effort on his part to manipulate her. In what direction, she can't be sure. And for that reason, she can't be sure whether he succeeded or not.
But Ben made her feel that way too. He valued her, against all his better judgments, all his effort to the contrary. Keith had tried to tell her, too. That she was enough. That she didn't need Luke or Ben or any of that to do right by the Resistance; that she could be that for them. Confronting it so directly still leaves her feeling out of sorts. Kind of fuzzy.
But maybe that's just the cold.
The water stings on her skin — more than usual, worse on the burn — but she doesn't flinch away from scrubbing it clean all the same. It hurts terribly, breaking through the suppressive effects of the painkillers. But it'll heal better. Infections were always worse than short term pain. Always.
And the pain clears the cotton and fog out of her head, anyway. She feels more herself when she gets out, dries off, and emerges dressed for bed. He lies still on the bed, but she can feel that he's awake without even reaching for him. She climbs onto it beside him, wet hair first settled on her pillow as she looks over at him. She doesn't pull closer yet, doesn't feel like she has enough sense for if it'd be welcome while he's so clearly grappling with something rooted in ... her. What a foreign thought. ]
Thank you.
[ She'll leave it there because she doesn't know how to better articulate that it makes her feel valued in ways that she never got from the whole lot of nobody who cared for her injuries in the past. Finn had been the only one. Ever. And that was heroic cooperation, not necessarily quiet wound care. She can't put to words that it makes her start to recognize that this is the way people treat people when they are enough. ]
[He says this from under the cover of his arms when she joins him on the bed, but the tone he uses makes it clear that he is just voicing an observation rather than complaining about it. Though really, he should be complaining about it. He even brought a towel over for himself.
After a moment, he lowers his arms and tilts his head sideways to look at her.]
They almost caught us.
[Another voiced observation, and though his expression doesn’t change whatsoever to indicate it, there is something in his voice that suggests that...he enjoyed the experience, however stressful it might have been. He lifts his hands and turns on his side to face her, propping his head up with one arm so that he can observe her better.]
[ Of course that's what he points out. At this point, though, she's pretty sure she's immune to any incidental slight from him. For the night, at least. And anyway, if she pointed out that holding the hairdryer up would irritate her injury, she's sure he'd be saying fuck the hairdryer too.
But she doesn't say that. Instead, she nods. ]
They did catch us.
[ And then they'd still escaped. There's no denying the exhilaration of winning that kind of fight, and after a moment, her mouth turns up into a smile. They did catch us, but we still got away. ]
[The First Order would have been even more angry at the Vakdir for having caught and then lost them. He imagines the Resistance would feel similarly. But Rey hasn’t had enough failure in her life to know that.
He exhales on that note and looks down at the space between them.]
[ That anticipatory paranoia sinks in, and by now, she's familiar with it. In fact, looked at from this angle, she can see that not dissimilarly from his approach with the likes of Thrawn — and even Keith — this is almost a protective instinct, warped into something nigh unrecognizable. For now is the specter that looms over him in Snoke's place. He wants to keep this the way it is, wants to keep them alive, wants to keep everything he has because he's afraid of having it ripped from him.
She wonders just how much he feels he has lost, and how much he rid himself of. ]
'For now' is as much as we can do.
[ They don't have control over the future. They're powerful, but not that powerful. All they can control is taking the hits as they come and getting away. ]
[Until the next thing goes unvoiced. He keeps his eyes down in between them, wrestling with a desire that he can't pinpoint the origin of. His anxiety and anger are still running high, in spite of the confirmation Rey has offered: they are safe. There's nothing left to worry about. They'd won.
But he still wants something else.
Kylo Ren hesitates in reaching for her hand, but he does eventually reach out. Interestingly enough, the Force has appeared to have retreated from binding them, now that they were sharing space more often. Or maybe it was because of what Loki had done. Or maybe there was another reason.
With that thought in mind, he doesn't offer a solid grip on her hand -- more of a curious attempt to bridge the gap, a brush of his fingers across her's.]
None of this feels like a victory.
[But...he doesn't really know what a victory looks like either.]
[ She doesn't — or perhaps can't — mask the sharp inhale she draws when his skin touches hers. Her fingertips twitch as if leaning into the touch. Chasing it. But she doesn't hold him. He obviously doesn't want that, or he'd have done it. They had before, after all. Instead, she lets her fingers skate lightly against his skin. A soft, barely-there touch. ]
We got the datastick. We got out with our lives. When these people want anyone who isn't them dead or imprisoned, that's what victory looks like.
[ Their very survival, and the furthering of Rost's agenda, is subversive on its own. She doesn't consider that his framing is very different; this has always been the kind of wins for a rebellion, and for a tiny scavenger on Jakku whose survival felt like a victory every day — against R'iia, against the elements, against Plutt. ]
A rebellion isn't a war won all at once, but small battles add up.
[His fingers eventually come to rest when she reminds him that they are staging a rebellion, and a crease returns to his brow.
Yes, he hadn't forgotten. He still isn't very comfortable with what they are doing on a larger level, even if the First Order had risen in its own form of rebellion -- but against chaos, not...whatever this was. It reminds him that things didn't always exist in blacks and whites. It wasn't always obedience to rule or rebellion to upset it.]
Adding up doesn't always promise a solution.
[But Kylo Ren recognizes that he is close to this subject, so he withdraws from it and moves his arms so his head can rest back on the pillow in silence.]
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Inside, he stares at himself in the mirror — pale, gaunt, and clearly anxious. His eyes look more sunken than usual, and his nose has turned red from the outdoor abuse. He watches himself swallow a few more times before he refocuses and washes his face with a quick splash of hot water. He then grabs one of the many towels to run it under the faucet. He wrings it out carefully and opens the door again after steeling himself for what is likely on the other side.]
Stop moving. You’re making it worse.
[He holds out the towel, wet and drapped between his hands in both offerinf and asking for permission.]
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His words take a moment to sink in simply because their intent is so foreign, coming out of him. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. She takes care of him. (What a wild and wacky world they live in from the offset, where that's a sentence accepted as normal.) He doesn't understand the utility of that kind of sentiment, so he eschews it, and she has to beat him into taking care of his own damn body, which is only about half as counterintuitive as it sounds. But this is him offering it to her in kind.
Maybe he has been paying attention.
Her gaze drops to the towel in his hand, and reluctantly, she pulls her foot off the seat of the chair without removing her sad remaining sock. She nods to him her assent, but she's left not quite sure what to do with her body when he'd told her to stop moving and he's so much taller than her in the first place.
So she just stares up stupidly at him, looking the part of a drowned cat, her shivering making her look small. ]
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He also hadn’t expected her to listen so well, so there is a long moment where he forgets where he was going with that command. But, eventually, he pulls over a seat from the sad dining set and nods to it. Its not a perfect fix, but he isn’t going to stand there and hold a towel for her while the burn heals. He hands her the warm towel (imagining that it would dull her shivering some) and turns to fetch another. This one, he wets in the sink with cold water.
When he comes back, he pauses to look behind her, wondering how to even...voice his idea. Why is he doing this? Even he isn’t totally sure — it just feels correct.
So he mistakenly does not use his words when he kneels down to press the cold directly to the burn at her back, doing his best not to look at her face qhen he does it.]
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It's not a shower, but it's a nice middle-ground given that she should probably wouldn't want the shower spraying directly on the burn like this anyway. She's minding her own business like this when she feels him approach, turning to look up at him.
When he kneels, it's a little alarming. Humbling in a way — on his part, not hers. It makes her feel … she doesn't know what. But there's something tight in her chest to see him crouching to attend to her; he's not the ominous, looming monster that everyone wants to make him out to be. That he wants to make himself out to be.
The cold compress touches her skin and she sucks in a breath, both at the temperature and at the direct contact with her injury. Goosebumps prickle across her skin, and she straightens a little, reacting bodily to the sudden contact. Her fingernails dig into the warm towel in front of her and the act squeezes drops of warm water out into her lap, soaked up immediately by her pants.
That inhale comes from something else too, loaded with sudden awareness of his proximity and her bare skin, like there's some complex formula that factors in his closeness and the surface area of unclothed skin and right now it's all out of balance. ]
Cold.
[ She utters reluctantly, as though afraid admitting as much will make him pull his hand away. Reaching one hand up, she summons the mostly dry towel he'd handed her in the elevator into her hand and pulls it around her shoulders. There. Maybe that'll help on multiple fronts. She thinks this, but glancing down to watch him, she doesn't believe it. ]
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But what he gets instead is him simply...staying there for a few silent seconds, too caught up in the corner he’d pinned himself in. He’d been so high on anxiety that he had forgotten to think before reacting and now Rey was reading into it. He could sense it without even needing to look for it.
He awkwardly clears his throat.]
Yes. Its a burn.
[Helpful as ever. His voice is quiet, and he very suddenly feels the need to pull away — like a child who had approached a large animal for the first time and suddenly wants to be very far away from it.
So, he rearrages the towel some so it rests against both the burn and the back of the chair and starts to pull away, tucking his long legs underneath himsef so that he can stand.]
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She exhales, flooded with both relief and disappointment. The grip she holds on the towel around her shoulders loosens. She slumps a little back into the chair, using her weight to pin the cold towel in place even as the coarse fabric of the towel now irritates the sensitive skin of her burn.
Some part of her wonders over whether she should apologize, but she doesn't know what she did wrong to make him withdraw, or if it's even a matter of right moves and wrong moves. More likely he'd never even thought about it at all.
That thought makes her chest tighten in stifling denial.
There is still the matter of the pain. It's not just the burn; she can feel that. There's bruising under it that the cold is helping to suppress but not correct. It's probably not broken. Probably. ]
I can wait. [ She reaches up to indicate the towel around her shoulders as she turns to look up at him. ] If you want to use the 'fresher. [ Giving him a task seems like a kindness, but for who? She's taking mental inventory. She has sterilizing wipes and painkillers still. They'll help with this once the cold towel has sufficiently numbed her. ]
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Really, it hardly has anything to do with her. A lot had happened today — they’d nearly been caught, he was on the run for the first time ever, and he’d managed not to kill anyone.
The water doesn’t turn on for some time even after he disappears behind the door. Something is eating at him, something he can’t pinpoint or define, and its causing him to lapse in memory. But eventually, the water comes on with a groan of the old pipes, and he goes through his usual routine (its mostly conditioning all of that hair).
But once the automatic shut off triggers, he stays inside and sits in the basin to brood to himself, uncomfortably picking at hang nails and listening to someone speak on the level below him. Eavesdropping mundane conversations with the Force]
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When it's clean, she pops painkillers and … stews.
It's a lot to process. At least she's alone now, so when she feels the shuddering exhale of relief that she's not captured and on her way to a quiet and forgettable death, she knows no one can see. Maybe she's not so unlike him, hiding her weakness until it's easy for her to process.
She wrings her hair out on the pile of clothes and then wraps the mostly dry towel around her, as much to dry her undergarments and body as to anticipate the fact that she'd heard the water shut off.
Not that it'd make a difference to him if she hadn't.
And then he doesn't even come out anyway. She settles back onto that chair, trying to keep the skin of her ribs from stretching even though any way she sits seems to make the wound itch. At least the worst of the pain is fading, between the numbness and the painkillers kicking in. ]
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Eventually, he reimerges. Given the fact that he is kicking out his wet clothes with one foot, and both hands are holding a towel at his waist, he hadn’t really thought this whole process through. He’ll...address that once she is out of the room. He doesn’t look much more at ease in spite of the relaxation time he supposedly took — in fact, he almost looks worse.
He should probably ask if she needs more help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he engages in a staring contest, waiting for her to take the room he had left open for her.]
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For a moment, at least.
Then she shuts her eyes and shakes her head to dismiss … all of that. It's not the real matter at hand here. And Ben, he doesn't look great. He's clearly out of it. Has been since he'd thrown those guards into the wall. ]
What's wrong?
[ Yep. They're doing this right now. In towels. ]
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Nothing.
[But then he seems to remember that he's staring and turns away from her like clockwork to continue getting out of the way. Rooming with Rey, as it turned out, was way more than he was prepared for.
Or maybe further engaging Rey's compassion was the real mistake. Everything he does feels raw and uncomfortable.]
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[ She doesn't budge, even when he does. What seems like it should mean that she won instead leaves her feeling dismissed, but she's too stubborn to just let it lie. Some alarm sound in the back of her mind warns her that she'd been just as persistent at Doro's castle, and that had led to trouble, but —
This isn't the same as that. Or she tells herself that anyway.
She's still cold. She really should get in the shower just to warm herself up, keep herself from getting sick, but instead she's digging her heels in. Perhaps because he'd talked to her so openly after what happened to Odinson, it bothers her more that he closes off now.
It's nothing she did wrong. Rey's sure of that because she hadn't done anything. He'd been off since they fought the Vakdir outside that mall. It only culminated in this. ]
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[He lets her call him on his lie, but supplies her with another non-answer in return. Its the best words to describe what he's dealing with, something that he really doesn't know the origin of. He knows that he is bothered -- but the lines have become so blurred that he doesn't know why.
The conflict of it makes him ill, and being fully aware of the unsatisfied rage buried somewhere deep in his chest makes him all the more uneasy.]
You should be more concerned about your wound.
[Like he is??? For some reason??? He shoves that out of his mind.]
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Like you are, every time you get injured?
[ This, frank and sarcastic, comes in the tune of a call-out. Not to point out the way he prioritizes her, but rather to suggest her doubt of how genuine it is. If he hadn't been so persistent in dismissing her concern over his injuries, maybe she'd be more convinced. ]
Suddenly pain matters to you because it's mine and not yours?
[ Never mind that the pain is mostly suppressed right now by a combination of medication and lingering numbness from that cold towel. She'd already handled it as best they could, here.
She starts to draw towards him but catches herself in recognition that they're a barely clothed mess right now and decides maybe physical contact isn't what this already incendiary mixture needs. So she draws that hand she'd reached towards his shoulder back and drops it at her side.
Bubbling up in her chest she finally recognizes that his 'don't feel well' only serves to make her more nervous. She knows how volatile he is, so that could mean a lot of things. The right answer is probably not poke the bear, but here she is, unable to stop poking the bear. ]
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So he swallows down his silence and moves toward the couch, adjusting the towel around his waist to make sure he remains covered when he sits. He really wants to put some actual clothes on, but he's not quite brave enough right now to attempt that while Rey is still in the room.
Too much self reflection. He's like an overstimulated puppy.
Once he is planted on the couch, he reaches out to call a dry towel into his hand to lay over his torso. He suddenly recognizes the urge to call another to cover his face, to shut out the world around him.]
We don't need to examine it.
[He offers that dryly.]
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Oh.
Suddenly straightening, Rey stares at the back of his head and finds herself feeling rather stupid. His sentimental offering from before comes back in echo. Rey, telling him she wasn't exceptional, and Kylo insisting that she was to him.
She'd been right in placing when he'd begun to act strangely, and terribly blind to the cause. It wasn't the fight with the Vakdir. It was the fact that one of them had hurt her. That she'd been distracted by the pain and the mission didn't mitigate her sudden brush with humility, realizing she'd been pushing buttons when the answer was obvious.
Assuming it was only his worry about her felt too self-important, but there's definitely a root of it there that he'd admitting through … not denying it. That's very much a response that says 'Yes, it is different, and let's just leave it at that.' And that leaves her feeling weird enough to let it alone.
What does she do with that? Uncertainty only pins her to her spot for a minute. He might have the best idea, to just let it alone and give him a chance to process. She turns to head into the fresher without another word. ]
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Once he is properly covered, he moves toward the bed with a dry towel, folding it up and throwing it on the nearest pillow so that he can stretch out and cover his eyes with his arms. He just. Needs a minute. Several minutes.
Was this what Loki was talking about? Not always doing what was expected of him? Was it supposed to feel this awful, or was that just because he had already mired himself so deeply in the Dark side? He exhales, long and slow, to push it all out of his mind. If he didn't examine it, then he didn't have to worry about the changes that were occurring. So long as Rey was willing to leave it alone too.
He barely resists the urge to pick his head up when he hears the refresher door open again.]
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Down there, that place had told her that she was alone. That her answers were in herself, not in some legacy that she imagined was good, warm people who she'd be reunited with one day. That child's fantasy was gone. In replacing it, and arriving at terms with Ben, she'd found a new interpretation of that vision. That maybe it wasn't about being alone at all, but being enough on her own. Nobody, yes, but not nothing.
She takes off her magitek and leaves it on the counter, grimacing as she strips off her undergarments because it stretches the skin of her back, where the burn is and puts pressure on her ribs beneath by shifting them around with the movement of her shoulders.
That was what Thrawn had told her. She wrestles with it now because she wants to see truth in it but she also suspects that some of it at least was an effort on his part to manipulate her. In what direction, she can't be sure. And for that reason, she can't be sure whether he succeeded or not.
But Ben made her feel that way too. He valued her, against all his better judgments, all his effort to the contrary. Keith had tried to tell her, too. That she was enough. That she didn't need Luke or Ben or any of that to do right by the Resistance; that she could be that for them. Confronting it so directly still leaves her feeling out of sorts. Kind of fuzzy.
But maybe that's just the cold.
The water stings on her skin — more than usual, worse on the burn — but she doesn't flinch away from scrubbing it clean all the same. It hurts terribly, breaking through the suppressive effects of the painkillers. But it'll heal better. Infections were always worse than short term pain. Always.
And the pain clears the cotton and fog out of her head, anyway. She feels more herself when she gets out, dries off, and emerges dressed for bed. He lies still on the bed, but she can feel that he's awake without even reaching for him. She climbs onto it beside him, wet hair first settled on her pillow as she looks over at him. She doesn't pull closer yet, doesn't feel like she has enough sense for if it'd be welcome while he's so clearly grappling with something rooted in ... her. What a foreign thought. ]
Thank you.
[ She'll leave it there because she doesn't know how to better articulate that it makes her feel valued in ways that she never got from the whole lot of nobody who cared for her injuries in the past. Finn had been the only one. Ever. And that was heroic cooperation, not necessarily quiet wound care. She can't put to words that it makes her start to recognize that this is the way people treat people when they are enough. ]
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[He says this from under the cover of his arms when she joins him on the bed, but the tone he uses makes it clear that he is just voicing an observation rather than complaining about it. Though really, he should be complaining about it. He even brought a towel over for himself.
After a moment, he lowers his arms and tilts his head sideways to look at her.]
They almost caught us.
[Another voiced observation, and though his expression doesn’t change whatsoever to indicate it, there is something in his voice that suggests that...he enjoyed the experience, however stressful it might have been. He lifts his hands and turns on his side to face her, propping his head up with one arm so that he can observe her better.]
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But she doesn't say that. Instead, she nods. ]
They did catch us.
[ And then they'd still escaped. There's no denying the exhilaration of winning that kind of fight, and after a moment, her mouth turns up into a smile. They did catch us, but we still got away. ]
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[The First Order would have been even more angry at the Vakdir for having caught and then lost them. He imagines the Resistance would feel similarly. But Rey hasn’t had enough failure in her life to know that.
He exhales on that note and looks down at the space between them.]
For now.
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She wonders just how much he feels he has lost, and how much he rid himself of. ]
'For now' is as much as we can do.
[ They don't have control over the future. They're powerful, but not that powerful. All they can control is taking the hits as they come and getting away. ]
We're safe. We won.
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But he still wants something else.
Kylo Ren hesitates in reaching for her hand, but he does eventually reach out. Interestingly enough, the Force has appeared to have retreated from binding them, now that they were sharing space more often. Or maybe it was because of what Loki had done. Or maybe there was another reason.
With that thought in mind, he doesn't offer a solid grip on her hand -- more of a curious attempt to bridge the gap, a brush of his fingers across her's.]
None of this feels like a victory.
[But...he doesn't really know what a victory looks like either.]
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We got the datastick. We got out with our lives. When these people want anyone who isn't them dead or imprisoned, that's what victory looks like.
[ Their very survival, and the furthering of Rost's agenda, is subversive on its own. She doesn't consider that his framing is very different; this has always been the kind of wins for a rebellion, and for a tiny scavenger on Jakku whose survival felt like a victory every day — against R'iia, against the elements, against Plutt. ]
A rebellion isn't a war won all at once, but small battles add up.
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Yes, he hadn't forgotten. He still isn't very comfortable with what they are doing on a larger level, even if the First Order had risen in its own form of rebellion -- but against chaos, not...whatever this was. It reminds him that things didn't always exist in blacks and whites. It wasn't always obedience to rule or rebellion to upset it.]
Adding up doesn't always promise a solution.
[But Kylo Ren recognizes that he is close to this subject, so he withdraws from it and moves his arms so his head can rest back on the pillow in silence.]
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