(AN: So. I sobered up, went to fix the approximately 547 mistakes I could suddenly see, and in trying to edit somehow deleted the whole work. So i'm reposting, and sorry for the spam)
Methamorphosis
She sees what she must do now, sees it so clearly, can almost touch the conviction.
...she takes his hand.
They stand surrounded by bodies and he thinks she doesn't know him but she does.
(she's almost sure of it)
Red blood on red floor, her feet are tacky with it, but she moves closer to him, so close she can see herself in his pupils, so close that she fancies she'll burn.
His eyes are wet; perhaps that's why she can see herself so clearly. He clutches her wrist so hard she feels radius and ulna grind together, and a detached part of her waits for the dry sound of a break. But even in his turmoil, his triumph, he's careful not to hurt her, not really, not much, and she puts her hand over his. Soft soft whisper soft.
Shows him how to be gentle.
"Rey."
His lower lip wobbles with the syllable of her name, and she touches his scar, runs her fingertip along it, journeys down along his neck, and holds his pulse in the palm of her hand. Feels his adrenaline storming against her skin.
It rushes in rhythm with hers.
"I will never leave you, Ben."
Her voice is clear and sure, and she catches a drop of her sweat with the tip of her tongue as she pulses conviction down the cord of their connection, makes him believe.
(a survivor, is Rey of Nowhere)
She steps into him, into his body, wraps her arms about his neck and holds him close.
He holds her too, but only with one arm. The other holds the saber, refuses to let go, and the sparks burn her hip.
No matter.
Her place is here now. She will lead him right, she will lead him true. She will carry the responsibility bravely and selflessly and she will not fail.
Over his shoulder she sees how the rebels make their escape to Crait.
She smiles, and at least some of it is for him.
They walk down the corridor together, and he still holds her wrist too hard. Maybe affection, maybe ensuring she can't leave him.
She lets him.
They step onto the bridge and all eyes are on them. He is aflame, he wolfs down stars with his eyes, ravenous, greedy. And she, she stands right next to him with her head held high and her hand on her saber as he addresses the command, tells them that their supreme leader is dead, introduces them to their new supreme leader.
("or else" is silent, but they all hear it loud and clear)
"And…her?"
A flame-haired man with bright rabid eyes (Hux, supplies Ben down their connection), turning her entire existence into the curl of a lip, a sneer.
She's pretty sure she hates him.
"You are to obey her too in all things."
She can't quite hold back a smile edged with triumph at the disgust in Hux's eyes.
She had thought that their first stop would be Coruscant but it is not, he orders their course set for Mustafar.
("pilgrimage closure end" he doesn't whisper through their bond but she hears him anyway)
He allows no one off ship but her, and she stands next to him as he hurls two helms, one new, one old, both twisted, broken, warped, into the lava.
Relics both, now. Obsolete.
"Kill the past," she whispers.
He strokes her neck, and it is almost gentle.
Coruscant next.
They don't stay for long, only enough for stilted ceremony and for Ben to scare what remains of the Senate straight.
After that they leave. He seem unable to master stillness, is happy only at light speed, and even then he paces, twists and turns and spins. And she, she is glad to leave that planet. Too many impressions, too many smells, too many colours, too much, too much. She's a rough-hewn creature, wild, and she longs for wide-open spaces, fresh air, an eternal dome of space above her head.
She's not getting it onboard a Star Destroyer hurtling from one rim to the next.
But at least she is doing good. At least she's with Ben.
It's not easy ruling a galaxy, and benevolence and diplomacy doesn't come naturally to him.
Untamed rages and lethal outbursts do.
He is formidable and unstable, power crackling untethered about him, brimming over in his eyes, too much, too much for his body to contain. There are cracks in his mind, tiny fractures running across his soul.
She sees them, and she won't allow them to spread, widen.
(she slides along the canyons of his fault-lines in the dead of night)
Because she is powerful too. And she is always there, at his side, a hand on his arm, a soothing susurrus in his head.
The light to his darkness.
But sometimes….sometimes she wonders if he sees her notions of light as whims to be indulged.
He will indulge no one but her, after all.
Ben keeps that long ago vow, spat out with warm blood on cold snow, and takes over where Skywalker left off. He trains her diligently, every day, and she grows stronger and stronger in the Force.
And so does he. They grow in tandem, feed off each other, take from each other, become so intertwined that she struggles to keep her mind separate enough to have secrets.
(she creates safe spaces deep down inside where it's dark where it's safe where no one else can reach but her. she is alone here she is)
He is held aloft by anger and pure power, vulnerable and strong, an unhinged elemental being, cloven by paradoxes. She is becoming more and more entangled in the torn tapestry of him.
More and more split herself.
She looks at him sometimes, and feels how his power laps lazily at her mind, and she thinks that nothing can stop him now.
His only weakness is her.
And she is starting to realise that her biggest weakness is him.
He decides to travel into the Deep Core, and nothing she, or Hux, or anyone else says can convince him otherwise.
It is fraught, cruising here, swerving and looping anomalies, the light from all those stars driving them both to the brink of insanity. Yet he insists on continuing, and it takes all of their concentration to safely navigate the Destroyer.
The black hole holding the galaxy together is calling him.
She knows because she can hear its call too, a constant whisper in the back of her subconscious, archaic wisdom just barely out of reach.
A siren song driving them both to distraction and she marvels at how beautiful self-destruction looks.
It gets to be too much though, and he loses his temper and kills a lackey, one of those damn empty white troopers
(they are giving her the creeps they are making her so terribly sad)
and she walks straight into a hurricane as she steps close to him, into him, speaks with her lips against the fragile skin on his jugular. Whispers, on the inside and out.
"Be merciful, Ben, and they will grow to love you."
He doesn't articulate a response but she feels it non the less. He, the only being she's ever found to be as lonely as her, he doesn't care for love.
He only cares for her.
Later that night he finally decides to turn around, abandon his flirtation with the supermassive black hole, and she slips away and sends a coded message to the Resistance. She ensures they are always a step ahead, ensures they are always safe.
She can balance this. She knows she can.
There are uprisings, they blow like wildfire across the galaxy, and he rushes to meet them with glee. It takes everything she's got to try and convince him to go easy. Slights against his authority makes him incandescent, and she is the only one who dares to be near him then. The struggle to balance the dark in him is sapping her, and she grows weary, so very tired, of standing between him and his lust for chaos.
Eventually she doesn't go with him anymore. She stands back, stays onboard, mutely watches him leave to maim and subjugate.
She leans against the viewing port on the bridge, far above the rebelling world, and she loathes herself for giving up.
Her hands are sliding against glass, and she absently thinks that nuclear explosions look pretty from afar.
She suffers terrible nightmares, and he can always feel them. He will come to her quarters then, and sit silently by the windows. She will wake to see him silhouetted against stars and nebulae, and her heart will slow and she will go back to sleep.
She knows he will keep her safe.
She hates herself for feeling safe.
Then one night he is at her door even though she's not asleep.
"I can't wait any longer. I need you… I need you more."
He's careful no to crowd her, careful to give her a choice, and his hair move with electricity as he fights to keep himself still. He tries to keep his mind still too, but he can't, and she is overwhelmed with desire. She doesn't know if it's his or hers, and she wonders how she can speak with no breath.
"I've never done this before."
His eyes flashes and there is more darkness than she cares to admit, more wild delight. They are chasms, his eyes, ricocheting and rupturing light.
"I won't hurt you."
He steps closer, his knuckles drag gently down her cheek and her heart is the core of a dying star.
She takes his hand, puts it atop her left breast. His hand is big, so big it could crush her heartbeats in a blink, and his fingers fan, touches her nipple, touches her rib, her collarbone, and the sigh slipping between her lips sounds like it could be one of pain.
How can she possibly navigate this?
Then he steps closer still, steps inside her skin, and she burns, she burns herself on him.
He's got her lips, and she thinks that nothing can compare to this. She wants to drink him dry, and as he tears her tunic clean in two she offers him her throat, but tries to hold back her heart.
He wants to be gentle, but he is not a gentle man. No matter. She finds she enjoys being set alight, and she bites his shoulder until he bleeds. She laps at his blood, and she keens, and she begs him to move faster and go deeper, reach that part of her that she has kept hidden for so long
(wants to beg him not to go that deep)
...she doesn't know who she is any longer.
Afterwards she lies nestled within the landscape of him, and she feels terrified and she feels safe.
I love you he sighs through their bond.
"I love you too," she says, because it's easier to lie out loud.
They wake entangled, snared to each other, and even as she moves into him, tries to crawl inside him, she wonders how she can ever become free.
He arranges new quarters, bigger, more opulent, for them both to share.
"We won't ever be apart. We won't be lonely again. Not any longer, not ever," he says as he holds her too hard.
She presses her lips against the soft hollow just below his throat and she worries over how she will be free to reach the Resistance now.
"I love you," he says and she believes him.
"I love you too," she whispers and she believes herself.
He takes her off-ship.
A rare occurrence these days, and it strikes her that he guards her jealously, keeps her hidden away on the Star Destroyer as much as he is able. Keeps her to himself.
They're on a green planet somewhere in the Outer Rim, it's greener even than Takodana, so green it hurts, and she can't get enough. It calls to her, this place, sings to her, and she wonders why he has brought her here.
They walk beneath ancient oaks taller than the highest skyscrapers on Coruscant. Sensuous, lush blooms, forlorn birdsong, wild herbs, and air so sweet she feels she's got nectar in her lungs.
There is an old, crumbling Jedi temple among it all.
He burns it to ground, then he wipes the sun-warmed tears from her cheeks, and burns her to the ground too.
She lies naked on the soft grass afterwards, stares at pieces of sky visible through oak branches and she realises that Ben is no longer being torn apart.
She is.
Slowly but surely they bring the galaxy together, he with brute force, she with diplomacy and whispers in his ear from the shadows. She's his anchor, his link to humanity, and she wonders what will anchor her. There are days when she doesn't know where she ends and he begins, and her thoughts are growing increasingly volatile, and how will she ever hide her deceit?
They float in vacuum, him and her, gravity can't touch them. The only time she is truly at peace is when they touch, naked bodies pressing so tightly together that they print their souls into each other's bones. She wants to hide forever in the universe of him; curl up in his hair, swim the dark rivers of his veins, upstream, towards his heart. Her fingertips traverses his cheekbones, his eyelids, his lips, oh his lips: she trails along the shape of her name.
Outside of them she is falling, and she's got nothing to cling to but him.
She tries to hold on to the part of him that couldn't kill his mother, but most of the time he's the man that cleaved his own father's heart in two.
Her life is becoming harder and more slippery to juggle.
She juggles fire and knives.
Hux suspects.
She can deceive Ben, because she hides her betrayal deep underneath her affection for him.
But not Hux. She can feel his distrust, his hatred for her, and he is always there, watching her, loathing her, hampering her attempts at balance, her attempts to keep her friends ahead.
He will have to go then, too much is at stake, and a vague distant part of her isn't even sorry.
She kills him in his sleep. Poison for a snake, and anyway, he doesn't deserve to face his end.
Ben knows what she's done, and she can feel his approval and pride.
"You are becoming who you are meant to be," he says to her the morning after, as he pulls her on top of him. Every time they touch she sees a fractured mosaic of different futures ahead, and she hates being shackled to him but she loves her chains.
She tries not to think about it.
He's back from quelling another uprising and she feels his approach, can feel him from the docking port and through the corridors as he nears, pushing bodies out of his way, slamming them into walls, in his single-minded need for her. His mind is in uproar and it's triumph and lust and love and power-hungry madness and it echoes in her, becomes a feedback loop, and she paces and feels her pupils blow as she waits for him to reach her.
He's in their rooms sooner than is possible and he slams into her so hard she might never breathe again.
He's near violent, and she knows it's because he's fought. She can fool herself with diplomacy and politics all she likes; she knows that it is only battle and her that can focus and soothe his churning mind.
It is who he is.
Now he is pushing her further than ever before, wields her body like he wields his saber, and it becomes unbearable, this pleasure mingling with pain.
"I burn!"
"I'm sorry," he whispers "but you will just have to burn a little longer."
He moves over her and deep inside her, he swallows her whole, she loses all sense of self and she never wants this to end.
"Kylo!"
It takes a second before she realizes what she just said, but not he, he realises instantly, and it is too late now to take it back. His hips stutters momentarily, but then he recovers and he flips her over, has her on her hands and knees, ruts into her so hard and so fast that she will never ever stop feeling him. He pulls her hair, winds it around his wrist, holds her head in a vice and forces her to meet his eyes in the mirror. And oh, the storms, the storms raging in his eyes and there is triumph too, ugly and sweet.
"Kylo. Kylo. Kylo."
His name falls like blood from her lips, in time with his violent thrusts. She chants it like a prayer and he steals the worship from her tongue. He bites her neck and somehow she knows that this mark, this mark will never ever entirely heal, will never fade from her skin.
She is his now.
The blood she sees on his mouth feel like absolution, and she wonders when duty became love.
It's harder than ever now, to slink around at night, send codes messages, keep his sworn enemies alive.
She feels like she's betraying him.
She is betraying him.
"Rey."
She freezes at the consoles. It's the dead of night and she is caught at last. She wonders that it took so long.
He has brought most of the galaxy to heel now, not being alone anymore have centered him and made him powerful beyond belief
(she did this)
but she thinks that a lot more blood could have been shed. She has seen to it that it hasn't. That must count for something.
And the rebels are still alive somewhere - the General, Finn, Poe - and that too she holds tight to her chest.
When she spins around in her chair she sees him standing with his back to her, facing space, and she knows his eyes burn with the reflection of every single star out there.
"Kylo."
He stands absolutely still but everything is moving inside, she feels his emotions rage. But his voice is calm.
"You've kept them alive for the longest time, Rey. You've fought hard for them. You've fought well."
Her mouth taste of blood as she chokes on her heart. "You knew."
He turns to look at her then, and he smiles, and his smile sunders her heart in two.
"I know. I've known all along."
She had no idea that they were both so good at deceiving each other. It hurts more than it should.
"But…I don't …why?"
His voice is a whip and his eyes flashes, but his hands are gentle as they stroke her face and down along her collarbones, reaches her heart.
"They can burn, for all I care. I would order them wiped out tomorrow, every single last one of them. They mean nothing to me. But you…you mean everything. And I refuse to lose you. You're mine."
(her and the galaxy. both his)
She puts her hands over his, can feel her own heartbeats through his hands and hers. There it is then. Their survival his concession to her, his gift. Her for them. It's only fair, isn't it? Lose a little, gain such a lot.
She feels lighter, a feather floating among stars. She smiles at him. She means it.
"I love you," she says.
"I know," he says.
I told TheArtfulScribbler - hi, lovely! - that I would write a comedy next and I swear to god that this started out as one. And then...well. At least no one died? Much?
As is the norm by now, I only dare to post my stuff when I'm a bit drunk, I don't have a beta and English isn't my first language, which means there are probably mistakes. Please point them out to me and I will fix. Thank you, you are kind.
Also obviously I own nothing. Nada.