The humming ceiling fan throws quick shadows over the wall. Whir, whir, whir. Machines beeping. Vital signs steady. Dim lights; a bare-bones room. A crinkling white mattress. Hushed voices in the hallway beyond.
Rey strains to hear what they're saying from where she lies immobile on the hospital bed.
" …. jumped by thugs … terrible what these gangs are doing to the city, terrible … fought like hell, the poor …"
The nurse trails off. Another speaks – a man, this time, his voice tight with some barely contained emotion.
"… badly hurt is she?"
Her right arm in a sling. Head wrapped in gauze. Red-purple bruises across her torso, spotting her ribs, a few of which are broken. And, apparently, a gap in her memory since the moment she found that ginger cat getting mauled by a couple of scrapper kids.
Retrograde amnesia. She should be able to retrieve her memories soon enough. Or not. Every case is different, the doctors had told her; the human brain is a complex machine, we don't have enough data to work with yet, yada yada yada.
What does she remember? Sand and desert heat. The ramshackle abandoned factory she lived in, with scavenged flowers in cracked glass jars. Unkar Plutt and his band of thieves.
Only Jakku. Nothing else.
"Do we know who …"
The nurse's voice is thin, tremulous, audible and then not. "… know for certain but … order, or so the police say … place at the wrong time …." The words become clearer as they approach the door. "… if it hadn't been for that, that bystander who intervened, I shudder to think what might have happened to her …"
Rey shuts her eyes.
That's right. She'd been attacked by some rival scavengers – no, wait, it was those red-clad goons. Cronies? Henchmen? Whoever they were, they had really good armour, because she'd split her knuckles on the first punch.
Her memories are a little foggy, but she can still see the lamplight glinting off their shiny, glistening shells.
And it occurs to her –
Mmmmm, lobster.
Hospital food sucks.
The door swings open, and the nurse's muffled voice seems to crystallize.
"– have to come back if the patient's asleep."
Yes. She could pretend to be asleep. If she wanted, she could refuse to talk to whoever it is standing in the doorway. She's sick of being prodded with questions.
Instead, Rey turns to squint against the glare of the hospital corridor. All she can make out is a man's hulking silhouette, like a black cardboard cut-out with no detail on it. Her visitor is either very buff or wearing five layers of coats. Maybe both.
"She's awake," says the silhouette.
Without waiting for the nurse's permission, he steps inside and lets the door shut behind him.
In the silence that follows – and silence is different when it's held between two people, different still when a crowded room goes quiet; silence steals your voice when you're alone – her eyes adjust and the stranger's face comes to light.
And she frowns.
She's not sure what she expected, but it definitely wasn't this.
Giant or not, he looks pathetically vulnerable. Dark eyes, soft mouth curving into a weak chin, a long, expressive face dotted with moles. Though his body is the kind of sturdy that could withstand terrible pressure without breaking, there's something trancelike in the way that he holds himself – as though any moment his knees will give way.
Rey could swear on everything sacred that she's never seen this man before in her life.
But that's what she told Finn and Rose, and it had made their smiles crack like shattered glass.
"Have we met?" she asks carefully.
The stranger nods.
"I'm usually okay with putting names to faces, but … well. You know."
He blinks; looks almost dazed.
"You really don't remember."
(And his voice is the soft, distant roll of thunder.)
"Nope," she says. "Not a thing. Well – I know the important stuff, the earth goes round the sun and all that. But not you."
There – the flicker of hurt on his face. Rey braced herself for it this time. She's even becoming familiar with it.
But no sooner does she think the worst is over than there's a second change in her visitor. His shoulders fall. His clenched hands relax. A heavy breath gusts through that barrel chest, the kind when you set down a heavy box after carrying it up the stairs.
It makes so little sense, but he happens to be a very transparent person.
He's relieved that she doesn't know him.
Unsettled, she blurts out, "Do you want to sit down?"
He nods again, and rather awkwardly folds himself into the collapsible metal chair set out for visitors. One hand smooths down the layers and layers of coats.
There's a beat.
"How do you feel?" he asks quietly.
She squints at him. "Like I got jumped and beat up in an alley." The gauze wrapping her knuckles chafes, and she flexes her fingers. "But I guess you already knew that."
Another nod. Not a man of many words, this one.
"Did the police give you a hard time?"
"The – police?"
"Yeah. I thought they questioned all my friends."
Stranger McTallguy stares at the wall beside her bed.
"What?" says Rey, irritated.
"We weren't friends," he mutters.
"Fine. I guess you're just some dude." She frowns as another possibility occurs to her. "Wait. D'you mean … were we –" She gestures awkwardly between them. "Were we, you know …"
He looks back at her, blankly. "What?"
"Never mind." Rey lets her hand drop. "No offense, mate, but why are you here? If we weren't friends."
"We could have been friends if you wanted."
"I guess we didn't really get along, huh?"
"No. Not really."
A brief silence.
"You gonna tell me your name?"
The stranger hesitates. "I'm –"
his voice catches slightly
"– I'm Ben."
"Ben," she repeats, tasting it. What a bland, innocuous name. She doesn't know what she expected. "I'm Rey."
"I know."
Silence falls again. He's staring at her, his brows drawn up in an anxious upside-down V, as though any minute she's going to deliver the most heartbreaking news of his life.
"How much do you know about what happened?" she ventures.
His voice is carefully even. "Four days ago, you were attacked by members of the First Order. The ringleader's elite guard. They gave you three broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, internal bleeding and a concussion." He pauses. "And amnesia, apparently."
"The nurse said something about a bystander …"
His gloved hands tighten into fists. "Yes," and now there's an oddly bitter note, "the bystander."
"You forgot the bruises and cuts," says Rey lightly, "but all the rest is remarkably specific. I'm pretty sure they don't just give out information to random strangers. Did you bribe the doctors or something?"
Ben glares at her.
"I'm joking. Look …" She sighs. "You don't have to be here. Just come back in a week, maybe a few weeks – by then I'll have my memories back and we'll have more to talk about. Okay?"
But he starts to shake his head before she's even finished.
"No. You won't want to talk. You'll hate me."
"How do you know?"
"Because."
"Come on, it couldn't have been that bad."
He looks at her, and there is something in his gaze that chills her: something that reflects the deepest, murkiest, cobwebbiest part of her soul.
"You called me a monster," he says softly.
and behind his dark eyes –
– she sees –
– bare, black branches.
She sees blood, spattering the snow.
Murderer! And that's her own voice, ragged and furious, reverberating through her head. Monster!
And the thunder whispers back:
All of those things.
"Oof," says Rey uneasily. "That is pretty bad."
"Yes."
"Did you deserve it?"
He looks away. "Yes."
She considers asking what he did. Who he really is. Why he seems so certain that if she knew, she'd rather throw the door in his face than talk. But that feels like a jinx somehow. If all goes well, she'll remember soon enough.
Monster.
What's the worst he could have done?
If he had hurt her – really hurt her – Rey knows for a god damn fact he wouldn't be here right now: he'd be in a hospital room of his own, or possibly dead. But if he'd hurt someone else …
Monster. Monster. It's so personal. She has never hated anyone before. Plutt, maybe, for cheating her and everyone else trying to survive in Jakku, but that was just the way of things. You cheated who you could, stole what you could, nothing personal at all. All she ever felt toward the old bastard was a desire to bash him over the head and make off with all the portions she could carry.
And her family –
No, how could she hate them, how could she? Those faceless people who are hurtling across the world toward her. At any moment they'll open the door, walk through Stranger Ben like he's made of smoke, and welcome her back into their arms.
She has never hated anyone.
But apparently during the seven and a half months lost to her memory, she learned to hate this man.
Name your sins, she could say, like a priest to a man condemned. Name your grievances with me.
Instead,
Rey turns over her bandaged hand, palm up.
Ben looks down at it in a puzzled sort of way. Like it's something completely alien to him.
"How about," she says, "a truce? Just for now?"
It dawns on him.
"You don't know what you're offering."
"A ceasefire?"
"A –" He breaks off, not knowing what to call it. "It's not forgiveness."
"Of course not," says Rey, and a bolt of pain crosses his face. So this is what he wants, so desperately that he would talk to an amnesiac who hated him. Even if he hasn't said so. Even if he doesn't know it himself. "But there's no point in fighting each other right now."
He shakes his head, vehemently.
"You don't know me. You barely even know yourself. It doesn't count."
"Are you always this difficult?"
"Yes," he snarls.
"It's okay," she says calmly, her hand still extended toward him. "Don't be afraid."
And – there! A fleeting snatch of – of before –
– a murmur in her ear, almost a caress …
… so lonely …
Ben stares at her, eyes wide, the tightly wound expression fading. For a moment Rey thinks he must have heard it too – but of course, she realizes, he remembers saying the same thing to me.
(There are no two people that voice could belong to.)
He swallows.
"Okay. Truce."
His hands are warm and callused where they cradle hers, like a flower of glass; something coveted, something precious. And before Rey can say anything – before she can realize this isn't the handshake she intended – he bows his head and presses her knuckles to his forehead.
It happens with a quiet, shuddering exhale, so swift that her next words are caught in her throat. She can't remember what she was going to say. She can't do anything but stare.
Because here, at last, is something she remembers, something painfully familiar in his hunched posture, his unsteady breath on her fingertips, the hallowed silence that has enveloped them both. A kind of grace. Almost surrender.
Rey has the feeling that he has surrendered to her before.
That he'd be willing to do it again.
She doesn't know how long they stay like that before Ben sighs and straightens in the chair. He looks down at her hand, still held between his, with a dizzy kind of disbelief. As if being allowed to touch her is an exquisite novelty.
She opens her mouth on a question, but he speaks first.
"I want you to know," he says quietly, rubbing a thumb down her lifeline, "that they'll never hurt you again. I swear it." His voice is different now, strained, thick. "I didn't know what he was planning until it was too late."
She tenses. "What are you –"
Ben cuts her off. "And my offer still stands. If you get your memories back."
"What offer?"
He finally seems to realize that he might have crossed a line. He wavers, then puts down her hand as though it's made of coals and shoves the chair back.
He storms from the room without looking at her again.
Rey frowns, fingers curled against her palm to keep the lingering warmth.
I feel it too.