strongerthanblood | debut [for ben]

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ben solo

debut [for ben]

There's a moment that Rey realizes that this is the end of her story. She can feel the life draining out of her, but she isn't afraid of death, not anymore. How can she be, when with it comes the hope of new life for generations to come? She had won not just the battle, but the entire war, and her work is done.

Rey has spent her entire life searching for answers, always trying to find them in other people, but as she lays on the cold stone and stares up at the sky, she knows exactly who she is. The answer was inside her all along.

She is Rey, and her choices were all her own. Perhaps her life is ending just at the moment it truly begins, but she is content with that. There a certain amount of peace in knowing that her destiny has been fulfilled, and her friends can go on to live safe, happy lives. Her story may be over, but it will never die. The people she loves will live to tell it, and she will never truly be gone.

It's easy to give herself over to the Force. She fades away into it, and as the last breath leaves her lungs she hopes only to see those she's lost on the other side. Because even in death, she has hope. Be with me.

Then it's all over, and she can rest.

Power surges through Rey's body like a live wire, reawakening every nerve as blood pumps once more through her heart, and her eyes snap open as she sucks in a deep, gasping breath. She had thought her fight was over, her journey complete, but perhaps there is more work to be done.

Once she's on her feet, she holds out her hand and feels Luke's saber-- her saber-- fly into it, but before she can light it she comes to realize that she is no longer on Exegol. It is cold and dark, but this isn't the place she took her last breath.

The place she stands now is a clearing surrounded by trees, green and lush despite the snow falling down onto them, and her. Evergreen, they're called. They refuse to die, even when the world around them is cold and inhospitable. It makes sense that she would be reborn here, among them.

Rey blinks the snow from her eyelashes and reaches out around her, holding one trembling hand out tentatively. The energy that surges up to meet her is entirely unfamiliar and she gasps as it envelopes her. For as cold and dark as her current surroundings are, the place she's in is teeming with life. It's all around her-- joy and sorrow, light and dark. Violence and peace.

And Ben.

She feels it as suddenly as if she had been shocked and she lets the sensation flow through her, letting it warm her from the inside out as she reaches for him. Be with me, she thinks, pushing it through the bond as she looks around with wide eyes.

In all the chaos on Exegol, she thought that he had perished. Maybe he had, and she had too, and this is what comes after. In this precise moment, everything they've been through, everything he's done-- none of it matters. He's familiar to her in a place where nothing else is, and he's the only one that she can feel. More than that, she can feel the light within him.

"Ben," she says, breathing out the name to give it new life in this strange place. "You're here."

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Rey.

The moment she breathed life within Darrow, he felt her. It drew him gasping from sleep, bolting upright in a bed he struggled to think of as his own. Clutching at his chest, Ben clambered over the edge of the mattress, banging his knee on the nightstand with a startled curse.

"You're here," he echoed to an empty room, but suddenly, it was not empty. She stood silhouetted in the doorway, her back to him. He knew that her body stood elsewhere, snow clinging to her lashes, but they seemed destined to grasp for one another, despite whatever physical distance stood between them.

He fumbled with his clothes, ungainly as he pulled on a baggy, misshapen sweater he'd purchased secondhand.

"Where are you?" He asked. As before, he could not see her surroundings.

At the sound of Ben's voice, she whirls around to see him standing between two trees with barely a thing on, all that skin winter pale under the moonlight, and for a moment she's too stunned to really think much of her current predicament.

She wants to go to him, but she knows that he isn't really there. This is a product of their bond-- their dyad.

The question makes her blink, breath hitching as she finally tears her gaze away to look around again. None of this is familiar to her, and her eyes sting as she turns around in a full circle, trying to find some sort of landmark before looking hopelessly at Ben again.

"I-- I don't know. I just see trees. I'm in a forest. It's so cold." So much has happened, she's barely slept in days, and now when she thought it was all over, there is this. "Ben, what is this?"

But at least she isn't alone.

Nearly tripping as he stepped into a pair of pants, the lights in his bedroom flickered as he attempted to reach out to her, but their connection was more of an all encompassing feeling than a beacon. He knew she was there, but not where.

"It's all right," he promised her, dropping to his knees to dig his boots out from under the bed. "You're safe."

Sitting down in order to put them on, he looked up at her, her pale face, her cheeks a splotchy pink from the harshness of the cold.

"Rey, there's a single moon orbiting this planet. Do you see it?"

You're safe.

Those aren't words she ever would have expected to hear from Kylo Ren, but that isn't who she's looking at now. It's a strange sort of dichotomy to look at him and remember who he was, but also see who he's become. She had hoped for this for so long.

Kylo Ren is gone. Ben Solo telling her that she's safe makes a perfect sort of sense to her.

She watches as he gets dressed, having obviously been awoken from sleep, and she wonders if it's warm where he is. He looks warm.

"I-- yes," she says, blinking a few times to drag herself back to the moment. She can deal with her warring emotions over the man in front of her later. Perhaps when he's actually in front of her. She turns slightly so that she's facing the moon, nodding and swallowing hard. "I see it. Which way should I go?"

Edited 2020-01-19 22:35 (UTC)

"You need to put it on your left and start walking. You'll likely hit a road, or a boardwalk, with the ocean beyond. Neither should be far," he assured her as he stalked out of his bedroom, sidestepping around her, and though she was not really there, he could feel the way she disturbed the air around her, the bright, crackling spark of her humming beneath his skin.

Grabbing his coat from the the peg by the door, he pocketed his keys and made his way outside.

"I want you to tell me what you see. I'm going to come to you."

"A boardwalk?" She repeats, because she isn't sure she knows what that is. A shiver runs through her as she remembers the last time they were near an ocean together. The clash of their lightsabers still rings in her ears. It just happened, but it feels so far away.

He moves right by her and she turns to follow, lifting her hand as if she could touch, but she curls it into a fist and drops it at her side just as fast. His energy feels different to her, less jagged and fractured. Less tormented. There is still a storm inside of him, but perhaps it isn't raging quite so hard.

She's so proud of him, but this isn't the time to get into that.

"Alright." It's hard to watch him walk away and she feels a moment of clawing panic, but she pushes it away and makes herself walk forward. The moon stays on her left and she keeps her hand on her saber, shivering as she steps over piles of fallen snow.

"I can hear it. The waves." She rushes toward the sound, breathing heavier as the trees start to thin, and she lets out a shuddering breath as she stumbles out onto a beach. There are lights in the distance, stretching out into the water, and she starts walking toward it. "I'm at the water's edge, and I think I see the boardwalk. There are lights on the water."

It's even colder here, and she lifts her saber in a trembling hand and ignites it, hoping that it will give her a bit of warmth while serving as a signal. "Look for my light."

"Keep going. Toward the boardwalk. When you find an access, go up the stairs," he told her, and for a moment, he could not see her. Instead, he concentrated on breaking out into a run as soon as his feet hit the pavement, cutting through the park and following the access road towards the boardwalk.

It was late, the streets were largely empty, save for a few lone cars, and pedestrians stumbling home from a light night of revelry. He rushed past them and they seemed to take no notice.

"Rey," he said again, his voice reverberating through the link binding them, even as his boots skidded on a patch of ice, arms pinwheeling to right his balance.

"This is a city. You might encounter someone else before I get to you, but they won't hurt you."

Thinking of her lightsaber and the fierceness with which she always came at him, he added, "Try not to scare them," with something of a smile in his tone.

He says her name and it rings through her mind, settling her when nearly all she can think about is how cold she is. There's something in his tone, and it takes her a moment to place it. Fondness.

"I'll do my best," she replies with a smile of her own, teeth chattering slightly. When she sees stairs in the distance, she makes herself run through the wet sand to get to it. Nearly everything she sees is unfamiliar to her, and she stares up at a giant mechanical circle, struck with curiosity for a moment before shakes her head and turns away.

"I'm up on the boardwalk. There isn't anyone here." She can tell that this might be a lively place, but right now it is shuttered and dark. There are small booths and she reads them all, not quite making sense of any of them. She knows what cotton is, and candy, but not what the words mean together.

"Look for my light," she says again, hoisting her lightsaber up into the air with one arm. "I'm by a place that seems to sell whatever a corndog is."

That startled a laugh from him, the short bark of it rusty and unfamiliar. "Some sort of food, probably," he said to her, catching the first glimpse of blue light in the distance as he mounted the stairs of the boardwalk, making his way towards the hulking structure of the ferris wheel.

As his steps slowed, he passed into that disorienting space where her physical proximity seemed to overlap with the presence of her Force projection. Her voice echoed inside his mind, while the glow of her lightsaber grew brighter with each step.

In the distance, now, he could see the shape of her. He could see the tremble of her lightsaber, her eyes wild and frightened but as determined as ever. "Rey," he called, and now that she was there in front of him, he found himself unable to speak beyond that.

This is unlike any place she's ever seen. Even with how rattled she is, she can't help but to look around with a small sense of wonder. Every new place she sees makes her feel like this. After seeing nothing but endless desert for so long, new places are always exciting.

But then she hears a laugh. Ben's laugh. That new sound is more interesting than any place she's seen, and she blinks as a small smile graces her face. He laughs now.

He's close. She can feel him now, and she startles a bit when he says her name. It comes from a place close to her, not just through their projection, and she turns off the saber as she slowly pivots to face him.

"Ben." She stares at him, blinking slowly as she takes a step forward. He looks like he did when he came for her on Exegol, softer than she's used to but still so strong. When he tumbled over that cliff's edge, she had thought he was gone, having been too wrapped up in the fight to reach for him like she had wanted.

But he came for her. Instead of clashing together in a rush of anger, they had fought side by side. And now they're here, in this strange, empty place. Together.

"Ben," she says again, this time feeling her eyes well up with tears as her voice trembles. "Are we dead?"

"No," he breathed, closing the distance between them in few long strides. Shrugging out of his coat, he draped it around her, the motion unusually clumsy, his hands lingering on her shoulders only as long as they needed to. "You're not dead," he answered firmly. "You're not. Palpatine is dead. You're alive."

His jaw worked, his throat tight as he looked away from her.

"I don't know why we're here. We aren't the only ones. There are others, pulled here from the far reaches of the universe. They call it Darrow. I thought of it as a prison, but..."

He shook his head, his throat clearing.

"We should find someplace warm."

Rey nods a little as he speaks, distracted slightly by the sudden warmth that envelopes her, and more so by Ben's hands on her shoulders. It's the most he's ever touched her when they weren't fighting each other and she stares up at his face as his giant hands slide away from her.

"But--" She died. She knows that she died. Or-- at least she thought she did. None of this makes any sense, but she finds herself too tired to argue it. She wants to be alive. Of course she does.

"Darrow," she repeats, swallowing hard as she hooks the saber onto her belt and slides her arms into the sleeves of his coat. In any other moment she might find it comical, how much she swims in it, but she can't seem to stop staring at his face.

His scars are gone. During all the chaos on Exegol, she isn't sure if she noticed. She did that. She was also the one to give him the scar in the first place, and her chest tightens as she's nearly overwhelmed by confusion.

She should hate him, shouldn't she? But she doesn't. She can't. She doesn't want to.

Before she even realizes what she's doing, she lifts her arm and tugs the sleeve of the jacket down until she can touch her cold fingertips to his cheek, where the scar once was. At the moment of contact, she feels that same spark from when their fingers touched in the hut, and it makes her breath hitch.

"Yes," she says, blinking as she pulls her hand back and swallows hard, blinking the sting from her eyes as she finally tears her gaze away from his face. "Someplace warm."

It wasn't until he found himself alone in his apartment, staring at his reflection in the mirror, that he'd even noticed that the scar was gone, the skin smooth and unblemished. It startled him now to be reminded of it, as he watched her hand appear from the sleeve of his coat, her fingertips cool to the touch. He flinched, his expression sliding from bemusement to a more neutral mask, but she pulled away and saved them both the embarrassment of acknowledging the moment.

"I arrived two weeks ago. I've found only a handful of people who claim any familiarity with our galaxy," he said, choosing not to mention the presence of Luke Skywalker, just yet. He led her down the boardwalk, toward the lights of the city, here he knew they might find an dining establishment open through the night.

He flinches. The subtle twitch makes her feel a bit foolish, and she turns away from him as she swallows hard. What he's saying makes very little sense, and she shakes her head a little as she follows after him.

"We really can't leave? Wait." He keeps walking, and she lunges forward to grab him by the arm. "Wait, Ben. What do you mean you've been here for two weeks? We were just-- we just--"

Her hand is still on his arm and she jerks it away, brow furrowing as she forces herself to take a steadying breath. "I don't understand any of this."

It's then, once she tries to really reach out into the force, that she realizes how different this place feels, and she knows that he's telling her the truth. She thinks of Resistance, her friends, and she doesn't even know if they all made it out alive.

Edited 2020-01-20 04:09 (UTC)

"On Exegol. I know. I can't explain it. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced. Or even heard of," he admitted, frowning down at her hand on his arm, his spine ramrod stiff as he watched her, once again, pull away.

His jaw worked, molars grinding, and he allowed himself a brief reprieve as he stepped ahead of her, opening the door to a small, empty diner with its Open sign cheerfully lit.

"When I arrived, the city was being invaded by fish monsters. You should count yourself lucky," he said wryly, plucking a pair of plastic menus from a stand by the door, which instructed them to sit wherever they liked.

Passing the exhausted looking waitress at the bar on his way towards the booth in the back, he ordered two coffees, which had already become something like a routine for him. It would be warm, if nothing else.

After everything that happened, she had sort of thought she was done feeling lost. It's only sort of reward she would have wanted for it all-- simple understanding of her place. It was almost in her grasp.

Her brow quirks at the mention of fish monsters, but she's too distracted by the place he's led her into to question it. She has to squint against the light, and she looks around as she follows him.

The smell of food makes her turn, stomach rumbling slightly as she stares at what must be a kitchen. When was the last time she ate something?

When she turns back around, she's struck by the sight of Ben sitting in a booth. He looks so-- casual. His clothes are simple, free of his ornate helmet and cowl, and she blinks a few times before sliding in across from him. When she puts her hands on the table, the sleeves of his coat cover them entirely and the corner of her mouth twitches.

"Are we eating?" She asks, trying and probably failing not to sound hopeful. The place seems so calm, with everyone minding their own business, and she turns to give the space a lingering look before she feels comfortable enough to turn her back on it and face him.

Edited 2020-01-20 04:41 (UTC)

Watching her peer in the direction of the kitchen, Ben was struck by a memory not his own. It belonged to her, to the child she'd once been, lonely and desperate and hungry, on a planet ill-suited for inhabitants, let alone a little girl. A memory he'd stolen, while searching for a man that he'd once been so convinced he needed to kill.

Her voice brought him back to himself, and patting his pocket to make sure he'd remembered the billfold he'd acquired for Darrow's strange paper and plastic credits, he nodded, pushing one of the menus in her direction. Afterwards, he let his hands rest, folded calmly on the table as he fought the urge to bury his face in his palms and weep.

He'd been alone for so long, and he'd thought it only fitting that he be alone in Darrow, as well.

Edited 2020-01-20 04:52 (UTC)

Brow furrowing slightly, she looks away from him to the thing he's slid toward her. Her eyes widen a little when she realizes that it's a list of food options. The sheer amount of them overwhelm her slightly, especially since she doesn't even really recognize much of anything on offer.

Someone comes over and sets down two cups of steaming, fragrant liquid. She doesn't know what it is, but she tugs her sleeves down so she can cup the mug in her bare hands. Blissful warmth travels up her arms and she sighs softly, taking a brief moment to close her eyes and enjoy the sensation.

When she opens them again, Ben is still sitting there stone-faced, and she isn't sure what it means. She could try to look into his head and find out, but she wouldn't do that to him now.

"Are you unhappy that I'm here?" She finally asks, lifting her chin a little when her voice cracks. It didn't feel that way when they were together in the bond, when he assured her that she was safe, but he's so quiet and the energy coming off of him makes her eyes sting.

She can't even for sure state she's pleased to have found him here, but she can't deny the pull that she feels towards him, whatever it means. There is one thing that she knows for sure. "I'm glad that I am not alone."

Blinking rapidly, the air in his lungs stuttered, his vision blurring for a brief moment. He coughed, shaking his head, a perfunctory, juddering movement, his voice thick with rust as he answered her with a simple, "No."

He knew that she would drink the coffee black without complaint, but he reached for a packet of sugar, tearing it open and dumping its contents into her cup with deceptively steady hands.

Clearing his throat, he said, "You'll have somewhere to live. Credits to buy food. This happens often enough that they have a system in place."

The reaction makes her curious, but he doesn't elaborate. Her gaze strays to his hands and he watches as he pours sugar into her cup. Those hands, which have tried so many times to hurt her. Hands he asked her more than once to take. They, too, are now free of scars.

Her brow lifts slightly as she stares at those hands, and she doesn't look away until he speaks again. Even if they are being held captive here, that all seems a little too good to be true. "And what do I have to do for the credits?"

"The person I spoke with called it an entitlement. Everyone living in his place is given enough to survive. So, in essence, all you have to do is live," he said, turning over his own menu as he pretended to find it more interesting than the way she seemed fixated on his hands.

"If you want more, you get a job. What that might be, you'll have to figure out for yourself."

"All I have to do is live?" Her tone is slightly bitter, but not because of him. For as long as she can remember, she had to fight for scraps. Whether it be scraps of food, family, or victory, she always had to fight.

"I can't imagine just living," she tells him, smiling tightly even as her eyes well up with tears. Few people even know of their universe, he had said. So there is no Resistance, and no First Order. No more waiting for parents that will never come.

No more fighting, even though the person who was once her greatest enemy is sitting right across from her, adding sugar to her drink to make it more palatable. It's a lot to take in.

Her mouth opens but the woman comes back to ask for their order, and Rey gives the menu another look but her vision is too blurred with stubborn tears to read the words. She spots a picture of eggs, which she only had once or twice on Jakku, and points at them. "I'll have this, please."

And then the woman keeps asking her questions. How does she want the eggs cooked? What kind of bread? What kind of juice? Rey swallows hard and looks over at Ben, looking vaguely overwhelmed. "How do you eat your eggs?"

"Neither can I," he admitted. Once, he might have been able to. Once, on Chandrila, when they'd been a family, and his hopes had still been very small in comparison to the life he'd lived. When all he'd wanted was to be like his father, the man who always seemed just slightly out of reach.

"We'll have two. Over-easy," he said, his gaze sliding from Rey's stricken face to the waitress, who seemed largely unfazed by Rey's indecision. "Wheat toast. Orange juice. And a side of bacon."

She opened her mouth, prepared to ask yet another question, but the stony expression she was met with had her gathering up their menus and hurrying off to put in their order.

With a sigh, Ben turned to look at the window, as a car drove slowly by.

Relief floods through her when Ben orders for her. This establishment seems nicer than any she's been too, so she isn't worried that she won't like the food. It isn't as if she were ever in a place to be picky about what she ate.

She turns to thank the waitress and when she faces forward once more, Ben is turned away from her, facing toward the glass and not looking at her. Rey sighs and looks down at her drink, carefully raising it to her lips to take a sip.

It's awful and her nose wrinkles as she gives the cup a look, but she swallows and takes another sip just to feel the warmth of it inside of her. Ben's hands are still on the table and she finds herself wanting to reach across and touch him, but he isn't even looking at her.

There are so many things that they could talk about, that perhaps they should talk about, but she doesn't say any of them. Instead she thinks of how his hands felt on her shoulders, and she crosses her arms on the tabletop to drop her face into the soft sleeves of the coat.

It smells like him. She wasn't even aware that she knew what he smelled like.

Edited 2020-01-20 06:06 (UTC)

Rey pillowed her head on her folded arms, her face hidden from view, and Ben's hands tightened into fists, his jaw working anxiously. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to remind himself that she was real. He wanted to hurl something across the room, just to shatter the silence settled heavy between them.

Drawing in a breath, he reached for the small container of creamer cups and slid it towards her. "Try this," he muttered, with a vague gesture to her coffee cup.

He sipped his own coffee. Black.

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