Four weeks later
Her feet pounded the pavement, the hard jolt a welcome distraction from her thoughts. Running had become a release and sometimes Rey had to remind herself not to over-do it. When she ran, she stopped thinking, and these days, she desperately wanted to stop thinking. The streets around her house were starting to be covered by a light green, golden canopy as the many trees starting to change, the very beginning of fall in the air.
She reached her apartment and ran up the steps, a last burst of energy forcing her onwards. Inside was full of boxes and she hated to think that she was losing another roommate already. Catherine had been offered a job at the same university as her mother. It was the job of a lifetime, and Catherine wasn't sure how she'd been chosen for it, sure her mother had a lot to do with it, though it was vehemently denied.
And so, she would be moving soon, before the start of the academic year, to get settled. It was only a few hours away, but Rey felt bereft at the loss. She had lost too many people lately. Finn had moved out, and she missed him every day, and now Catherine too. And Ben, she tried not to think it, but her mind supplied the name anyway. She had found and lost Ben Solo again, in the space of one month, and she felt irreparably changed by it.
First of all, there were the dreams. Flesh against flesh and hot breath tickling her skin, his hands, so large and unwieldy were surprisingly gentle as they pressed, pinched, rolled and thrust. It was like he had awakened something in her, and now, even in his absence, it roared.
Next there was the expectation. Knowing he was in the same city as her, living his life, somewhere in her vicinity, had her looking for him in every tall backed, or broad shouldered, dark haired man. Her heart stopped and stuttered back to life every day as she thought he had returned, either unknowingly or purposefully. In her dreams, it was always purposefully, seeking her out with an irrepressible intention to possess her, and she would surrender into his demanding arms. Those were the dreams she woke up from with an aching emptiness and a sense of shame, her deepest desires revealed.
She unlocked the door, and pulled her ear buds out as she saw Jack sitting at the table with Catherine, drinking a cup of coffee.
"Here she is!" Jack said warmly, standing to embrace her. Rey moved into his arms, taken aback by his sudden appearance.
"This is a lovely surprise!" she beamed, genuinely happy to see her beloved uncle.
"Well, I'll leave you two to get on with it, there's packing to do" Catherine said, excusing herself from the table and going into her room.
"She's excited about her new job" Rey said, sitting down at the table with Jack.
"She should be, such an exciting time" he agreed, offering Rey a cup of coffee from the pot on the table.
"No, I should really shower" she said. Jack nodded, and checked the time on his watch. He seemed to be struggling with something and Rey waited, knowing he always took his own time to share.
"Before you do, I'm afraid I'm not here just socially." He said, and there was something serious about his tone that sent a chill through Rey.
"I was wondering why you were in the city" she said, with a nervous smile, waiting for him to continue. He fiddled with his watch, and then straightened the cuffs of his jacket, and after a long pause, began to talk.
Life turns on a dime.
"Well, now, I don't want you to get worried, or upset, but I've come from the hospital"
"That hospital? What's wrong?" she asked immediately.
"Well, this is where I don't want you to say anything, or even think anything until I'm finished. Let me start by telling you that I am OK, and I am in treatment."
"Treatment for what?"
"Cancer. It's cancer honey. I'm sorry"
Rey felt the bottom drop out her life.
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Two hours later and she was finally standing in the shower. Jack had gone, starting the trip upstate, and she had walked numbly into the shower, barely remembering to strip off her clothes, and was now standing under the spray. There was a roaring in her ears she couldn't shake, in fact it seemed to be getting louder. She stood in the middle with her arms wrapped around her body. Despite the water falling down her face, she knew it wasn't tears. She couldn't cry, she was in shock, she diagnosed from a distance. Catherine had been hovering, so she'd come into the bathroom to escape. She couldn't take her sympathy right now. She couldn't understand how Rey felt. She couldn't understand what it felt like to risk losing the one person who had loved you unconditionally, the only one who'd never left.
She shivered suddenly and realised the water was cold, freezing almost, and she wondered how long it had been like that. She stepped out the shower feeling a hundred years old and wound a long, scratchy towel around her chilled skin.
In the mirror above the sink she looked at herself, pale, with too wide eyes. The numbness extended further than her skin, she felt frozen inside as well.
"Rey?" Catherine said through the door. She didn't answer, she couldn't.
"I've called Finn, he's coming over" Catherine said. Rey squeezed her eyes shut.
There was a yawning chasm inside her, it was opening wider and wider and pieces of her were falling inside. It was primal and instinctive, and she knew she couldn't sit and drink tea with her friends. They didn't understand. She couldn't stand it. She didn't want their pity or their sympathy. She remembered the child protective services office, and the worn chairs. She remembered the look on the case workers face. The girl who nobody had wanted.
"I'll be right out" she called to Catherine, even as her mind worked furiously. There were some clothes in the bathroom, a pair of jeans and hand washed underwear. She pulled it on over her wet skin. She listened at the door and when she'd heard silence for a while, slipped out. Dropping into her room, she grabbed a grey, v-necked t-shirt and her leather jacket, both dropped on the floor, as well as her converse and sneaked her way to the door. Hesitating at the notepad stuck to the back, not wanting to worry her friends, she scribbled out a quick note.
"Need some time alone. Don't worry about me x"
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As she rode the train toward Queens, Rey stared at the others on the train, finding her eyes glued to faces, staring until the people got uncomfortable and looked away. She soon got onto a line that was as familiar to her as her own reflection, being the first route she'd ever learned.
Once she got off the train, she lingered on the street, cold and empty, unsure where to go. She saw a dive bar ahead, the flickering neon sign calling to her.
She pushed inside, and walked to the long, sticky bar. It was so dark she could barely make out the face of the bartender as she ordered tequila.
"Three shots and a beer"
"Your friends joining you?"
"Sure" she said, paying for her drinks and waiting impatiently. She took them over to a scarred leather booth and sat in the deep recess alone, drinking one shot after another, before starting on the beer.
Two more shots later, a comfortable haze was settling over her eyes, and she could see the other people in the bar. She wondered if they were as lost as she was, if they had anyone who worried about them. She wondered how long this dive had been here, and if her mother had ever sat in this booth.
After another beer, and no lunch, she finally pushed herself out the booth and weaved toward the street. It was so dark in the bar, she had forgotten that it was only late afternoon. It seemed even more jarring to see school children running past and mothers pushing strollers. She turned a familiar way and started toward her destination.
The old place looked almost completely unchanged, except that someone had painted the front door, a bright, fresh, blood-red colour. It called her from across the street. As she'd walked the neighbourhood had gotten increasingly run down around her. Chain link fences ringed scrubby gardens, dogs with heavy colours barked at her. Groups of kid and older men hung on the corners, and Rey pushed past them, ignoring comments and lewd suggestions. She tried to imagine being a real teenager here, instead of St. Augustine's, Jacks cottage and meeting Ben Solo in a forest, if she had been one of the girls on the corner, with the too small top and loud laugh, nervously glancing at the group of boys' opposite.
Now, the alcohol burning fire through her veins, she made her way up the sagging porch, to where the red door screamed her name.
Rey
It sounded like her mother's voice, and it sounded like a warning.
She sat down heavily on the steps, suddenly sure she had to leave, that she never should have come. She had sat on these very stairs when the coroner had taken her mother's body, she could still remember, the clang of the trolley steps on the railing as they had wheeled the black body bag past.
"Can I help you?" a rough voice demanded, and Rey slumped sideways trying to turn around.
"Whoa, be careful beautiful" the man's voice was so familiar, she felt as though she was falling back through time. She held shakily onto the barrier and rose to her feet, bringing her eyes up to the man standing over her on the porch.
Unkar Plutt
Her mind supplied the name instantly, as addled as it was. Their landlord for the better part of 5 years.
"You look real familiar… have we met before?"
"No" Rey muttered, making to leave, and staring down at the heavy, meaty hand that wrapped around her bicep.
"I'm sure we have… didn't I know your mama?" he must have read the truth in her eyes, because he smiled, a slow, lizard smile.
"Rey something, right? Damn, look at you all grown up." He was appraising her, his fleshy face quivering with interest. He was even fatter than she remembered.
"Come on in, do you want to see the old unit?" he was already pulling her toward the unit, and Rey found herself unable to muster the strength to stop him.
She almost felt outside herself as she waited for him to unlock the searing red door, and then lumber down the drafty hallway. She walked in the footprints of her 10 year-old-self.
He stopped at a familiar floor and fished keys out his stained overalls.
"This one's actually empty" he was muttering as he pushed open the door, and Rey felt a flood of memory sweep over her. The couch was the same, just more threadbare and flee infested than before. The curtain that separated the kitchen and the sitting room was different. There was a broken window that was letting a cold breeze in. She stood in the middle of the room, and looked down the hallway toward the bedrooms. She felt as through that cold dark wind was winding around her and pulling her to where her nightmares lay waiting.
"Take a look around" Unkar was saying as Rey started to drift slowly down the hall. She felt strange still. Numb and cold, and without feeling as she slowly pushed the door of her mother's former room open. She once again had the impression that she was just observing her body going through these motions. It looked the same, down to the curtains, moth eaten and stained. She stared at the bed, unable to stop the memories coming.
That night, when she'd finally gotten up the courage to push open the door, against the rules without permission, and enter. When she'd seen the lump her mother had made under the covers, her first instinct, had been gratitude that she had come home and not disappeared as she had sometimes done for days at a time. She had come back. Then she had become aware of the cold in the room, and the utter stillness, and the smell. She knew now that corpses over let go off their bodily waste, but at the time she had simply thought her mother had had an accident, and been too drunk to wake up.
"Brings back some memories, eh?" Unkar was right behind her. She stiffened, glancing back over her shoulder to see him leering at her from the doorway.
"Like I said, this one's empty, if you want it, it's yours. You got a place to live now?" he was asking, and Rey felt that roaring starting in her ears again. She felt a dangerous and violent need blossom in her chest and realised her hands were trembling. She was suddenly 10 years old and seeing this man, pushing his way into this very room, muttering about overdue rent recovery.
"I can give you the same rates as your mom, since we were so close. Shame what happened to her" he said, as Rey walked further into the room, her eyes absently going over the items, strange to her now, someone else's, another tenant after them.
She heard when Unkar shut the door, it's soft click straight from the tear-stained nights of her childhood.
"Of course, we'd have to work out the same arrangement, to get the discount, this is prime real estate" he was saying thickly, and Rey heard the clink of a belt opening.
She wondered if this is what Kylo Ren felt, for a moment. This disassociation with reality, and she realised it was soothing in a way, easier to deal with than the ghost of perfume she swore she could smell, of a woman long dead.
She turned around and looked at him impassively.
"You're an odd one, ain't you. Now, your mother, she had fire" Unkar was saying, seeming a little taken aback by her silent staring, his hand falling awkwardly from his undone jean button.
"Oh, I have fire alright" Rey heard herself say, as she moved toward the wardrobe and the cheap metal sweeping brush she'd spied there.
"I have my mother's fire, and then some. I'm happy to show you" she said, picking up the long pole, and deftly twisting the brush off the end, leaving her with a staff, which she swished in front of her a couple of times, borrowing Ben's swagger.
Unkar narrowed his eyes at her.
"If you don't want the unit, that's fine, just get the hell out." He said, spittle flying through his ruined teeth.
"I don't want the unit, but if you want me out, you'll have to make me" she said, far from herself, seeing and feeling the glint in her eye, the war cry in her chest, and the hatred in her blood.
It was the righteous anger of a 10 year old girl who didn't understand why her mother cringed when this man walked past, who didn't understand why she'd lock Rey in her room, when Unkar looked too long in her direction, and would hide on wobbly legs beneath the bed until her mother's door locked.
She wasn't that little girl anymore, and she didn't have wobbly legs.
She swung the staff at him.
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An hour later, Rey stumbled from a cab on the Upper West side, and pushed cash at the diver. She had the sleeves of her jacket pulled as far down as they'd go and her hair hung in a curtain around her face, which she kept lowered.
She glanced up quickly at the building, confirming it was the right one, and hoping her memory was as good as it had seemed to be earlier, when so many screaming memories had hurdled back to her. She pushed through the glass doors of the lobby, looking away from the security guard who sat looking at his phone. But the time he looked up, she had stepped inside the lift and was shooting up to the penthouse floor.
The lift doors slid open with slick motion and she was once again walking the halls of a different childhood.
She approached the door and hesitated a moment. What if he was home, she wondered, and then worried he wasn't.
She couldn't go home to her friends like this, mad with grief and fear, angry as she had never been, and wearing a man's blood on her clothes. There was only one person she could think of.
She decided to try the code, and punched it instil emblazoned on her memory. An agonising second in which she berated herself for thinking he might not have changed it in all this time passed, and then the light went green, and the lock disengaged.
She slowly pushed the heavy door open and peered her head around the side, looking into the darkened apartment. She walked in and shut the door quietly, walking into the open plan kitchen and resting her hands on the cold countertop. The silence was heavy. The city lights, and the dark hole of the park stared up at her from the full length wall of windows.
She went to the fridge, feeling hunger pull her from her desire to look around. She felt half wild as she grabbed some cheese and bread and forced them down her dry throat, before returning for a bottle taken of a shelf, which she popped, and gulped down. She kicked off her shoes and walked to the windows, sitting down in front of them, she ate quickly, roughly, as she hadn't in years. She didn't know if the hunger was real hunger from not eating all day, or a phantom hunger from walking the halls of the childhood house she had so often been hungry in.
She took a long swing of what had turned out to be champagne. Picking up the bottle, she wandered down the long hallway, the cold night time light of the city accompanying her, etching her shadow on the wall beside her.
She found his bedroom, and lingered in the doorway, before flopping face first onto the bed. She breathed his smell in deeply, filled her lungs with it, and it felt so good she could have fallen asleep there. It smelled like safety. Avoiding looking in the mirror, the pain in her hands and her lip, puffy and swelling further with each minute, she pushed herself off the bed and flicked on the bedside light. It illuminated the sparse, designer furniture, everything minimal. She randomly opened a drawer and found rows of black underwear, and shut it quickly. She moved to the wardrobe next. It was ridiculously big, bigger than her entire bedroom, and she slid the doors open and stared at the work wear inside. Black, dark grey and navy seemed to make up the entire colour spectrum. She thumbed through the suits, glancing over most of the designer labels without recognition. She drank a little more, and remembered Ben's secret box in high school, and how she had hidden in his closet that night, watched him taken his anger out on himself. She felt like maybe she understood him a little more now, as her cracked knuckles stung as her fingers tightened around the heavy bottle in her hand.
She dropped to her knees and pushed into the back of the closet. What she was searching for, she didn't know. Maybe another secret box, to see what Kylo Ren preferred to use on his… arrangements. Just the thought sent a shiver through her.
Her hand brushed a box toward the back and she carefully pulled it forward. Breaking into Ben's apartment and then going through his stuff, it is probably no less than he's expect from a scavenger, she through wryly as she opened the cardboard storage box.
There was a folder with a label on it, a model airplane and a pair of black gloves. She stared at the gloves, something tickling the back of her mind, through the haze of pain and bubbles.
She picked them up and as she touched the soft well-worn leather, she remembered her Christmas present, that he was going to open alone on Christmas morning. He's kept them all this time. She looked at them carefully, and saw near seamless patching work, where worn out fingers had been replaced and lining repaired.
It brought a lump to her throat, and she pushed them down and looked at the model plane, before discarding it. The last folder she held up and squinted at to make out the cramped writing on the label.
Personal effects of Mr Solo, Han - Decreased
She froze holding the plastic envelop, desperate to look inside and get an insight into the night that seemed to have broken the last resistance Ben had held against the darkness of his mentor.
Only the sound of the door unlocking and the snap of the sitting room lights going on jerked her back into motion, and before she knew what she was doing, she was stuffing the folder into her jacket's inner pocket and zipping it closed, before pushing the box into the wardrobe and bringing the door to a close just as Ben appeared in the doorway.
His guarded look fell away as he stared at her in shock. He was wearing a white shirt, and it was the lightest thing she had seen him in, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and grey trousers. He was staring at her with the most unsettling mix of disbelief and something else, something Rey struggled to name, but it seemed like hope.
"Rey" he breathed, moving toward her as she stood, flagging in front of him. His eyes swept over her, and his face went whiter than usual with tension. He grabbed her hands, and then pushed her jacket off her shoulders, taking in the fine spray of blood that decorated her chest and neck, his fingers frantically checking her over.
"What happened?" he said roughly, turning her around.
"Where are you hurt?" he demanded, a frantic note entering his voice. She just stared at him, shaken by the weight she had felt lift off her shoulders at the sight of him.
"Rey, can you hear me? I need to know where you're hurt sweetheart" he was saying, now cupping her face.
"It's not mine" she finally got out, and saw his profound relief.
"I – I did something terrible" she continued, and slowly, like a slow-motion collapse of a card house, sank to her knees, taking him with her, as he shifted to support her weight.
"Tell me, whatever it is, it doesn't matter" he said, and suddenly pressed her head against his chest, his mouth moving in her hair.
"Tell me Rey"
"He – he was our landlord, he… I went there, I went back-" her thoughts were a jumbled mess and she struggled to articulate what she needed him to do.
"He's… he needs help" she finished. Ben looked at her a long moment
"Are you sure you want to help him?" he asked. She looked into his eyes and saw the truth of his feelings for her for a moment, that he would help her do whatever she wanted with the man who had wronged her, without a second thought. There was something twisted and beautiful about that kind of emotion, even as it was terrifying and heart-breaking.
"Give me the address, I'll take care of it" he instructed, taking out his phone from his pocket, seeing her guilt and worry in her eyes.
"Will you be ok here?" he asked, as he held the phone to his ear. She nodded, and he reluctantly rose and walked to the en-suite bathroom, banging around in cupboards and running the tap, speaking in a low tone she couldn't make out.
He returned quickly, and pulled her up carefully, his touch as gentle as if she were made of glass.
"You need to take these off" he murmured, his hands pausing at the edge of her t-shirt. She nodded and lifted her arms, feeling the weight of the day fighting her. Next, he unbuttoned her jeans, the knees almost soaked through with dark blood, nearly invisible under the dark denim.
He pulled her jeans carefully down her legs, and she held onto his shoulders, as he pulled one foot out and then the next, steadying her until she was balanced again. He stood and pulled her over to the bed, saying nothing about the blood stains from when she'd thrown herself down earlier, hardly visible on the black sheets. She had never imagined that if she were to be standing in front on Ben in her underwear, in real life, and not only in her dreams, it would feel so non-sexual.
He went to the bathroom and returned with wash cloths and a glass of warm water, as well as a first aid kit. He sat on the bed next to her and wet the towel, holding it toward her neck.
"May I?" he asked, and she nodded. She had felt so unattached and vacant the whole day, and now, sitting here before Ben and in the echoes of their past, she felt her consciousness start to return to her body. He wiped the blood away across her face and neck, down her arm. He then laid a warn compress on her torn knuckles, all the while, she watched him in silence. She couldn't stop taking in the tiniest details, like the way his eyelashes were so long they almost rested in his cheeks when he looked down, and that there was a dark freckle just above his lip.
"Ok, let's see them" he murmured, lifting off the wash cloth and frowning. She felt a wave of tiredness as he started to clean the torn skin, and closed her eyes, swaying a little.
"Almost done" he murmured, his voice close and warm and more comforting than she could have anticipated. She felt him touch her cheek and gasped with pain.
"Motherfucker" he swore lowly as he held another warm, moist towel up to her swollen mouth and spilt lip.
"He'll pay for this" he promised darkly, and she opened her eyes to meet his furious gaze.
"He has" she said, her own darkness staring into the face of his. And there was darkness there, she had felt it, licking through her veins like black fire as she had beaten Plutt down after he had landed a lucky punch. He hadn't gotten up again.
"That's my girl" he said with a quiet satisfaction, and she felt sick and proud all at once. She closed her eyes, feeling her head swirl again.
"Have you eaten? And no more of that, not on an empty stomach at least" Ben was saying moving the upended champagne bottle and urging her back into the bed.
"Don't tell me what to do" she said grumbled, letting him put her under the covers, and watching him disappear from the room. She closed her eyes, and felt sleep beckoning, the kind of flat out deep tug of exhaustion, and, finally safe, she let it take her.
Had, we are all caught up! If you follow me in both places, sorry again about all the updates! I wanted to catch up here, as I owe it to my readers who only use or my beloved Klaroliners who know me from this platform.
Thanks to Stories_In_My_Head for hunting me down there and reminding me!
As always, let me know what you think, and enjoy - the next chapter should be up today, tomorrow at latest and you can always drop in a see me on tumblr... my name is the same))