Summary: Ben and Rey continue to deepen their relationship, the Force ghosts wait for the opportune moment, and Ben practices his calligraphy.
Notes: Sorry for the long wait. I had an idea where this story was going, but then kind of lost inspiration for it. So now I'm going to go in a different direction and see if that sparks something interesting.
Calligraphy
Ben woke to darkness, a different kind of darkness than what he was used to.
This darkness was warm and peaceful. He felt strangely lethargic and unwilling to move, lying there. His chambers smelled musky – a not unpleasant mixture of sex and the desert smells he always associated with Rey; sun and heat and clean sweat. The sheets on his bed were cool against his bare, flushed skin and Rey was a warm, heavy weight draped across him. Her legs were spread every which way, her arms clamped his torso like a vice and her hair – which smelled of summer – covered his face.
Ben turned and breathed in the scent of her skin, fingers rising to skim along her back, tracing the arch of her spine until he came to the swell of her buttocks.
Rey shifted against him in her sleep, making those contented little noises he loved so much – almost like a Loth-cat – as she shifted against him, her firm thigh pressing firmly against his usual morning erection.
Ben sighed in amusement and attempted to discreetly shift away from her, not wanting to disturb her rest, however she made a little mewling noise of discontent and shift again, face pressed into the side of his neck and her hips moving until she was settled directly between his legs, her warm core pressed firmly over the bulge in his sleep clothes.
Ben swore. Loudly. Against his neck, Rey laughed breathlessly, tongue darting out to lick her dry lips and sweeping briefly over his skin. "I've never heard you curse before," she murmured, wriggling against him delightedly. His hips helplessly bucked up into her, craving friction, and Rey wasn't laughing any longer.
With a happy little sigh of relief, she swept her lips across his, claiming him deeply, hands twisting in his hair as she ground down onto him. They both moaned at the contact and Ben reached down, pulling her thighs up and rocking them together.
When he eventually flipped them over and entered her slowly they both spent a heartbeat unmoving, staring at one another, heat and wetness and the mingling of their Force presences until neither could tell where they ended and the other began. It was bliss.
Afterward, sweaty and sated, Ben spent a long time learning her body all over again with his lips and the smooth pads of his fingers, finding the places which made her laugh and those which made her sigh and those which made her press against him and beg for more.
When she fell asleep in his arms again, tired and content, Ben could feel his heart pounding with an unfamiliar feeling. As he lay in the darkness, Rey's even breathing soothing his racing mind and her powerful Force presence ebbing and flowing around him like rippling waves on the shore, he suspected gloomily that this feeling might be happiness. He knew it couldn't last.
When sleep eluded him as it usually did, he got up, pulled on his trousers and softly padded over to his desk in the corner of the room. Low lighting flickered on at his approach, not bright enough to disturb the woman asleep in his bed. He glanced back at her again, long, bronze limbs tangled in the sheets, brown hair a halo around her face, long lashes over lightly-freckled cheeks.
She was adorable and beautiful at the same time, woman and child, enemy and lover, powerful Force user and raw beginner, someone to protect with his last breath and someone who had stormed Snoke's star destroyer to set him free. The fierce brightness of her spirit sometimes felt like it was too much to bear, but Ben knew that her power, her very dichotomy, were what made her irresistible to him.
Force, he wanted her again. He could never get enough of her. It was only when they were joined, their very bodies finally a mirror of the Force Bond between them, that it finally felt like they were close enough.
But it never lasted.
Why wouldn't it last?
Ben turned back to his desk, willing his heartrate to slow in time to Rey's even breaths. He organized the parchment, the pens with their sharpened nubs, the small glass containers of black ink. Carefully, deliberately, he dipped the nub of one pen into the inkwell and hovered over the crisp, slightly-crackling parchment. A bead of midnight-colored ink moved to weightlessly float at the tip.
Before it dropped and marred the page, Ben decisively brought his pen down and began to float it across the parchment, hand moving steadily as he traced ancient Sith and Jedi symbols, totems of good luck from the Guardians of the Whills, shapes to transfer power from the witches of Dathomir, pictures from the Aing-Tii, figures from the Dagoyan Masters and even images from ancient temples which depicted The Ones.
As he sketched the Daughter, he felt a presence – warmth like a spicy cup of tea or sunlight reflecting over sand dunes – hovering over his shoulder.
She was quite an attractive anthropomorphic representation of the Light, Obi-Wan Kenobi mused, refined voice holding what Ben suspected was a teasing note.
Ben didn't dignify the long-dead Jedi Master with a response. It was bad enough he had had to go around with Snoke's voice in his head since before he could talk to explain something was wrong. Now he had to have family members whispering things to him through the Force as well.
A scent of snow came to him then, a flash memory that wasn't his of snowflakes falling upon the dark curls of a solemn-faced little boy, and then the snow-capped mountains surrounding Aldera.
His mother was here.
Ben couldn't turn around, couldn't face her. Eventually, he thought he heard a quiet sigh and the presence – like sunlight on new snow – faded. As did Obi-Wan's.
When Ben finally turned around, Rey was gone as well.
A fat, black drop of ink fell to the page, smudging the careful words and symbols and pictures he had made. In a fit of rage, Ben tore the parchment in two and through the pages away.
He grabbed his lightsaber and left the room. Perhaps Jacen was up for a bit of sparring. Or even Tahiri. She could be quite vicious when the mood took her.
Notes: Rey finds Ben in the library of the Imperial Palace and learns that this place of evil had once housed the greatest collection of knowledge – and in particular Jedi history – in the galaxy.