Title: For Darkness, Stars
Chapter 14: Verum Aeternus
Fandom: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with references to all canon universes and non-canon supports as necessary
Author: Kira Solo
Summary: "…Between us the bond deepened, growing into something that could not be undone." (Bastila Shan) A story that explores the depths of the bond between Rey and Ben Solo in an emerging future where one's destiny might be shaped by the pull towards a higher purpose — a Force whose will is greater than the desires of those that are drawn together because of it. REYLO.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo
Warnings: Language, violence, scenes of a sexual nature, angst
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For Darkness, Stars
Verum Aeternus
...
If you and I
Had been anything less
Than these tormented souls
We would never have gone so far
To become what we are
- "Verum Aeternus", VNV Nation
Her mouth was dry, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as Ben raised himself to a seated position, the sheets puddling at his waist. He wasn't laughing now — rather, he assessed her with caution, trying to piece together what had happened just as she had upon waking. Something haunted crossed his expression as he raised his eyes to meet hers, his mouth parting as if wanting to say something, and then — his lips shut. He swallowed it down as he cast a furtive look about them, and then returned his attention to her more stoic than before.
She'd never seen him falter like that. He'd never once shown hesitation.
Irritation twitched her fingers, but she remained resolute — coiling a surprisingly hostile spool of anger in her stomach and trying to swallow down the urge to shout at him: Ben Fucking Solo. Tousled, sleep-mussed, his dark hair flopping in his face, sheet-creases in his cheek. Shirt off. Why was it that she always seemed to catch him with his shirt off?
It was obvious given their shared confusion that he knew just about as bloody well as she did what they were doing there, but it only served to stoke her ire.
He swallowed, wincing. Gingerly he touched at the wrappings binding his ribs — bandages that matched her own.
"Where —" he began.
"Takodana," she bit out, interrupting him. She gestured behind her at the rising dawn as it crested the jungle, illuminating the ruins left of a great castle. "Don't you recognize it?"
He'd laid it to waste — him and the First Order. Destruction followed in his wake. She bristled at his lack of expression. Ben's quiet assessment and contemplation of their situation wasn't helping matters, but she could feel his interest pinging down their force bond like this situation was a curiosity; like he'd forgotten that he'd recently tried to drown her.
Ben's head snapped to the door, sensing something. He winced as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, teeth grit in pain. He stopped his forward motion, fingers touching the mirror injuries to her own at his ribs. Both this shoulders bore matching anti-inflammation packs. She'd assessed all of this and then some while he'd slept, biding her time. Their weapons were conspicuously absent, but someone had seen fit to pull them off that forest moon and jump them to the Tashtor sector. Someone who thought it might be amusing to lock the pair of them into a spacious suite after some cursory healing — enough to not die from their injuries, but not enough to set them free.
She suspected the choice was deliberate.
Ben flinch-marched to the door, trying the knob first with his hands, and then with the force as he tried to guide the lock free.
"Tried that," she informed him blandly. "And there aren't any exits, save for a hundred foot drop off the balcony and down a cliff. Manageable with climbing gear, but there aren't enough bedsheets to string together to do it."
He swung around, his expression calculating, pulling the pieces together with the skill of a seasoned tactician.
He noticed, at last, that she was in a similar state of undress — her wrappings binding most of her torso and loosely covered with a light fabric. Barefooted and sitting ramrod straight, she continued to glower at him.
Something shifted in his gaze as he took her in, running his eyes over his body in a way that seemed as if he were almost concerned.
"You're hurt," he murmured. "I saw that tree clip you as it fell. There was so much blood."
Something ticked in her jaw — a bomb working its way down to detonation. Her fingers curled into fists. "Right. Before I saved you and after you attempted to drown me," she ground out.
"I tried to pull you out of that TIE fighter after you crashed it," he countered.
"I wouldn't have gotten into the TIE in the first place had you not been chasing me."
He stalked forward, grazing the stones and tapestries of the walls with long, thin fingers, trying to find another way out. A hidden panel or secret door, perhaps. She didn't stop him as Ben continued rolling around the possibilities in his mind: who was to blame and how might he extract himself from her company. She'd done the same.
"The Wookie did this. He brought us here. He helped me pull you from the wreckage when the door stuck — he carried us both and flew us all the way to the Western Reaches —"
Her eyebrows shot up. Rey, incredulous, shook her head with measured slowness — a warning. "Do not refer to Chewbacca as 'the Wookie' in my presence, Ben Solo. He's my friend. He was your godfather. And if he saw fit to save your sorry hide then you ought to be grateful enough to call him by name."
He smirked, returning back to the room, taking in their surroundings. A light glimmered in the depths of his dark eyes, faint amusement, incredulity, and something else that might've been mirth in any other person who found this situation amusing.
"I was trying to stop you from doing something worse to both of us," he informed her, his gaze resting heavily on her injuries.
Rey pressed her lips together, pressure building behind her eyes. She felt herself flush, unable to stop herself. "Do not blame me for trying to save you from yourself."
"That's not what I meant —"
"It's more than you deserved," she snapped.
He moved to the balcony, looking over the side to confirm the drop. Something shifted in his expression, understanding: "This was deliberate — this isolation. Someone's stuck us together here, locked us in. Why."
Ben turned back to her. With the rising sun large and red, spilling over the trees and painting the world with fire, Ben's expression was lost to shadow. He approached her, piecing things together as she had only moments before. "I can feel your sincerity. The confusion. You didn't do this. You're just as baffled as I am, but I think —" he stopped before her but not within striking distance. "I think there's a purpose here."
He rolled something over in his mind, deliberating if he should be forthright. The turmoil was palpable, and she knew with no uncertainty that between the forest moon and now, something had shifted. She swallowed, flexing her fingers, and wondered if any of it had to do with her desperate desire for self-preservation and what she'd drawn from the Force as a result. And even more, behind that knowledge lingered the wisps of a dream that called the heat to her face though she tried to suppress it. She found her gaze had settled on Ben's mouth.
Rey blinked, shutting the image away — mentally throwing it into a box and locking it before the warmth in her could spread; before Ben felt the tension where it curled in her belly.
She turned away from him, focusing on a fixed point on the wall above the bed's headboard to avoid his scrutiny; the way his attention slid over her features as they felt each other out. Rey ground her teeth together, a muscle in her jaw working, trying to quiet the chatter in her mind that felt his gaze on her face. Like a caress, Ben's interest always had a heat behind it that should have made her uncomfortable. Now, it just made her mad. She blinked, trying to stifle the intensity of it. It didn't work.
"Rey."
She snapped her gaze to his as he eased into a chair beside the bed. With difficulty, a hand on his ribs, he leaned forward.
"Don't you think it peculiar that we're bandaged in the same places — that our injuries mirror each other? I felt the same pain when that tree hit you, slicing into your side."
Eyes up, she commanded herself, fixing her attention on a spot between his eyes. Her breath turned shallow as she realized how close he'd sat beside her. Waiting.
"What."
He reached out a hand, the backs of his fingers ghosting her shoulder. She felt the heat of his touch, but not the pressure. "Your friend shot me with his blaster. Here."
Her breathing turned shallow. Rey found that the space between them shrank, the room growing smaller by increments as the warmth of his almost-touch tingled, even as he drew back. Something heavy settled on the air - she felt the pull of it through the bond, amplified by such a small brush of skin.
Rey swallowed, breaking eye-contact. "I must have hit it in the TIE when I crashed."
"You crashed because of it," he corrected. "The shock of it was too much — I felt you lose control of the craft. That's why you pulled left into the treeline — because you were feeling the injuries in my left shoulder. Blood loss, pain, and disorientation —"
"Which I might've avoided had you not attempted to kill me, to begin with."
It was a moment before he said, "Your anger sits just beneath the surface. There's so much fire there, I can hardly believe how you're containing it at all —" He didn't deny it. He didn't apologize. Worse, she couldn't feel any remorse from him. If Ben so much as flinched with guilt, she would know it. Of that she was certain. He wanted to kill the past. Interest simmered in his gaze as if he'd pull her apart to better understand the root cause of what transpired between them. He kept himself in check, but the heat remained.
"I saw you, Rey. In that forest — I saw what you did. What you're capable of. And I see you now."
"You will not lure me to the dark side," she snapped, whipping towards him so quickly that she sucked in a breath through her teeth, her ribs squalling in pain. "Stop trying to goad me," she bit out, her eyes watering. "It won't work."
He frowned, his gaze turning predatory. "As I recall, the original offer had nothing to do with any pre-established systems; light and dark." There was something dangerous in the way he promised, "We don't need those things, Rey. Not you and I."
Her dream — that vision of flame and shadow — simmered just beneath her skin, turning molten. Of the dreams she'd had, none had seemed so clear… save for one: the very vision which had driven her to confront him once more, believing he would turn. She had been so certain…
"There's more to this connection between us — it's growing. Getting stronger." He tapped his ribs, gesturing to their matching bandages. "What's yours is mine now."
She shook her head. They'd been in a battle. Plain and simple. She'd miscalculated, thinking that there was still something to be salvaged between them — in him — but Rey had no doubt that had she not somehow distracted him mid-way to murdering her, she'd be dead and Ben would be reveling in the gore. She was just scavenging for pieces of what Ben Solo might've been, once, a long time ago —
"Search your feelings," he pressed, his gaze turning hungry.
A hum was building in the base of her skull, growing with intensity the more she considered what he was saying: there was something there, siphoning from each to each, and they'd not stopped themselves in crossing that bridge that Snoke had built for them. He was in her head, and she in his, and the more she lingered there — the closer he drew to her — the more of him he shared with her, willingly or not. These were his feelings. His shadows. His sadness and frustration and loneliness amplified. She was nothing like him. Nothing like Kylo Ren — Nothing. No —
"No!"
She pushed the feeling away from her, and with it, Ben and his chair whipped backward, crashing into the stone floor and shuttling away from the bed a few feet. The tapestries on the walls lifted and fluttered, the curtains guttering against the balcony, blowing out into the open air.
From the floor, Ben barked in pain, gripping at the back of his head where he'd clipped the floor. A bite of pain assailed her, blooming into a dull headache behind her eyes. Hoisting himself to his elbow, Ben rubbed at the same spot, wincing. She grit her teeth. He grit his. They stared at each other, their connection pulled taut, and Rey knew what Ben said to be true.
Before she could consider it thoroughly, a sound rasped through the door. From the hallway came a scrape, and breathing heavily, they both snapped towards the noise emerging from behind the locked door.
"Someone's coming."