Fingers poised over her keyboard, Rey inhaled and took a deep breath, steading herself for what she was about to breath to life.
Thoughts had started to form within her mind over the course of the evening as she searched for a new writing prompt.
"Love and loneliness", she started.
She entered to the next paragraph and stopped stone cold again.
She knew she was about to dive deep into repressed memories and draw some very personal life details.
Writing was her escape and a way to distract herself from the bond.
I've convinced myself that they'll be back someday. Someday. The hallow statement that I told Ben through one of our force bond moments was a mantra I chanted over and over to myself every cold Jakku night to get me through to the 3 rising suns.
When he finally told me I was nothing, that I was nobody and that they were never coming back for me, I resonated with the truth, while clinging to the lies I told myself.
Memories are things you create yourself.
I knew that my mother abandoned me and my father when I was five. Whether it was the bleak prospect of livelihood together and not being able to support the family, or running away from her own demons, I remembered watching my mother board a space craft. The tall brown-haired woman tossed a single look over her shoulder and mouthed, "good luck kiddo".
My father was always ill. How he survived long enough to get me to eight was a miracle in itself. He pushed himself so hard without ever thinking of his own health.
Holding his hand tenderly –
Rey had to pause as she constructed her story. She turned on her music just a touch louder to drown out unnecessary thoughts in her head. She wanted, she needed to express it all.
"Why did you kill him," she finally was able to croak out to Kylo Ren. It had almost broken her to ask it.
Do you know what it feels like to watch someone you love die in front of you?
Sometimes out of pure selfishness and self-preservation, I wish I wasn't there. I wish that he was still here, I wish that-
Rey's eyes fluttered closed momentarily as she felt a familiar wave pass over her, alerting her that the bond opened and that Ben was standing behind her. He saw her sitting cross legged, with her silhouette being illuminated by her laptop screen in front of her in the dead of the night.
"One of those nights, heh?" he mused out loud. He knew that when she was in her trance, she wouldn't stop until her thoughts were exhausted. His gaze softened as he traced her outline and settled comfortably sitting next to her. He listened as rain rhythmically pounded outside wherever she was.
"I feel lonely too. It haunts me too," he says out loud, not expecting a response.
A pain stings suddenly through the bond, and both of them wince slightly. Whose heart was twitching at that moment?
Did you know that natural death comes swiftly? There is nothing romantic or dramatic about it?
I was alone, sitting with my father when he returned to the stars. Even now, years later, it is hard to string the full sentence together. I still use analogies and metaphors to describe death.
One day, one day they'll come back for me. How else was I supposed to cope?
Right before you die, it is a moment of clarify, a moment of desperation. Your last breaths become short and shallow, your heart beats unevenly and harder against your ribcage.
My ears still remember the rhythm of my dad's last heartbeats.
My hands immediately flew to his, grasping it tightly. Did he squeeze my hand back to let me know that he acknowledged that I was there or was it an involuntary response?
Was it my own desperation to make sure he knew that he wouldn't die alone?
The funny thing is, love and loneliness aren't so different in her case. Both are tightly bound feelings, threatening to snap in a single moment. She was tethering on the edge of her sanity, threatening to explode with emotions if she gave in.
Today, she decided to poured herself on paper.
She chose loneliness over love today.
Tomorrow would be a new day, a new blank document.
Each day was a choice and she told herself that she would go moment by moment, choice by choice.
There were days where she would break and confess her innermost thoughts to him.
The next days she would spend hours threading words together, ignoring his presence in the background.
He would just sit and watch as her fingers danced across the keyboard. He knew she'd eventually come back to him. He was patient.
She'd choose love over loneliness.
Maybe not today, but one day.
His mouth was gaping open, and he didn't recognize me anymore.
His last three days were swift. The doctors said that they were surprised he lasted so long.
It would take me months before I could ever actually go through his paperwork. I only remember numbly signing his DNR. Nurses described what it was, and what it meant. They told me that it would help ease pain, and that recitation, if necessary, would only crush his ribcage.
Cancer. Stage 4. Liver, brain, pancreas, stomach, bone and esophagus.
He had to have known. He just never told me. He kept working through the pain, ignoring all his symptoms until he finally collapsed, and by then, the doctors gave him weeks, if not days.
Monday, I'll never forget the way his eyes lit up when I peaked through his bed curtains. "Meatball!" he jokingly called me by my childhood nickname. He threw up fists playfully, calling us fighters.
His eyes were glazed, his hands were frail, and he was so devastingly thin.
She had to stop for a moment as tears were threatening to spill over. She closed her eyes tightly and squeezed them, tilting her head, as if she was just stretching. She needed to finish this story, she needed to finally face it.
Ever since she had met him, and was faced with someone who could read her every thoughts and intentions, she knew she needed to lift the bonds upon herself if she ever wanted to move on living in for present.
Ever since he had spoken the truth about her background out loud, her nighttime lullabies to herself quickly became overwhelming anxiety.
Her heart gripped her uncomfortably and a slow creeping panic threatened to overcome her every time she tried to close her eyes. If she didn't fall asleep right away her thoughts would race. She made it a point to work herself almost to death at every chance she got so that she fell asleep right away.
It wasn't the quiet and darkness of the night that haunted her. It was the moments between closing her eyes and falling asleep that were the worst.
The last thing my father asked me was if I was happy making all that magic.
"Magic" was something that I didn't understand at the time.
"Yes, daddy, yes I am so happy." It was the first and only lie I ever told him.
I was going to lose my father. He was laying there dying and he could only think of me.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
The next day he would come in and out of consciousness. He would stare at me, locking a stare. Hope lashed fervently inside, that it was recognition. But who I saw in his eyes was not my father anymore. He didn't know me, he didn't know where he was. Every time he demanded that he wanted to just leave and go home, a piece of me broke off and I buried it deep away.
It was late Wednesday afternoon that he stopped coming back to fight.
His head sloped sideways and suddenly his breath became shooting and short. I quickly grabbed his hands. They say you never know which breath is going to be the last, but that is bullshit.
I knew the moment he took his last breath, it was like I could hear his heartbeat rattling to a stop. I tenderly placed my ears over his chest, and just knew.
I sat there for at least ten minutes holding his hand.
Rey pushed away from the keyboard. Her throat was raw and it throbbed painfully. The feeling of wanting to cry and struggling not to was stuck and choking at her. It was a familiar feeling.
I was numb.
I stood up and walked up to the nurses and calmly told her that my father had passed.
She had been so nonchalant previously with every interaction we had. For the first time, her tired brows unfurrowed and she whispered, "oh honey." "Do you have anyone to call?"
No. it's just me.
"I'll take care of the rest".
He left me alone. I held his hands for another few minutes before letting myself move again.
They say hearing is one of the last senses to go when someone dies.
"I love you," I whispered into his ears, slowly removing my hands. I want to say that I memorized the feeling, every callous and ridge, but it is something that has already escaped me.
I left the room. They hadn't told me to, nor did they announce it, but I knew that under no circumstances that I would be able to handle watching him being zipped up and taken away.
She finished typing, not bothering to reread her raw emotions.
"My father is dead, Ben," she breathed out loud for the first time, the weight of the words finally being lifted after years of suppression.
Today was the first time after writing she acknowledged that he was there.