Chapter 28
Ben opened his eyes, squinting at the stream of sunlight that cut across his vision. Through the hair that stuck to his damp forehead, he saw the crown of Rey's head and glanced around his surroundings, recognising where he was immediately. The turned over AT-AT was the same as it had been in her dreams; cramped and filled with extraneous items that Rey had collected over the years. He could smell fresh caffa and hear the gentle pulsing of Rey's generator.
Rey's hand was tight in his, her forehead against his shoulder and she was whispering to herself over and over again as she sat on the small stool beside the cot. He couldn't avoid looking at the bandages that covered his arms and then to the ones wrapped across his stomach and across his shoulder to his chest. There was little of his torso that wasn't covered in bandages, which were surprisingly not stained with blood. Rey must have changed them more than once.
'Is this not against all of your orders?' he croaked.
She looked up at him. There was still blood in her hair and Rey looked as if she hadn't slept in days. Tear tracts covered her cheeks and Ben swallowed, his heart sinking as he looked at her. Her hands were against his face then and her lips against his. Ben did not have the time to think before Rey pulled back, looking broken.
'How could you say that?' she asked, her hand squeezing his.
Ben didn't have to ask to know that she meant his words before Rey had stopped his bleeding. For her to let him die, for it to be over finally.
'I told you before,' he responded, though he looked uncomfortable and guilty. 'I said we might as well take our Lightsabers and end it all ourselves.'
Rey's tears began again and she shook her head. 'Did you think about doing that the whole time? Did you not consider that it wasn't necessary?'
Ben closed his eyes and his free hand clenched and unclenched. 'It is not as if I could bare it, is it? You know I am weak. I am even weaker when you are concerned.'
'You admit it, finally?' Rey bit back, but she could not maintain her spite and her expression quickly calmed. 'It isn't something I caused,' she added with difficulty.
He reached for her, his hand against her cheek. 'I saw you fall and I thought that I won't let you go alone. I'll do what you wanted me to do, what was right and then I would follow you.'
His eyes skittered across her features, trying to gauge whether she was okay, feeling her pulse as her hand lay in his and his fingers slipped across her wrist.
Rey moved from the stool beside the cot to sit on its edge and she shook her head. 'Don't think like that. Don't think like that ever again.'
Ben nodded, wanting to do what Rey said. 'You still shouldn't have brought me here. You should have taken me in as a prisoner.'
'I was being selfish,' she murmured, her eyes dropping to the bandages that were wrapped around his body. Her healing could only go so far. 'And you were far too injured. You weren't yourself, you had a fever and were delirious. You probably can't even remember.'
He couldn't remember. Ben watched her expression carefully and took a breath before asking. 'Will you take me later?'
Rey met his eyes again and she nodded. 'I don't know what they'll do or say, but I don't know how else this can end.' She swallowed and closed her eyes, as if she didn't want to hear her own words. 'You did a lot of things wrong, Ben. I don't know what they will do with you, whether they would want to use you, or they might just want to lock you up and throw away the key.' Her eyes opened again and she looked at Ben carefully. 'But then you'll be near me, I'll be there.'
Ben saddened and his hand dropped from Rey's cheek. 'Won't you execute me instead?' he questioned. His hand reached for her Lightsaber then, though his injuries meant it was easy for Rey to catch his hand and move the Lightsaber across the room. 'I have been an affliction on this universe, a disease that needs to be eradicated.'
'No,' Rey said resolutely.
She got up then, moving to the tiny kitchen and shuffling around for several minutes before she sat back down with a bowl of warm grains in milk. Putting the bowl down at her side, she helped Ben to sit up and began to feed him herself, ignoring how he looked at her; like she was the last thing he wanted to see before he died.
'You have me,' Rey said as she scraped the final spoonful from the bowl. 'Don't forget that.'
'Yet I must pay for my crimes.'
'I know that, Ben.' There his name was again. It filled Ben with a strange elation to hear it again, to hear it from Rey's lips. 'But you're not the same person who was infected by Snoke's whispers; by anger and jealousy. There is still time for you to do good in this world, and I won't believe that, that time is over.'
He shook his head. 'Do I even know what good is?'
Rey nodded resolutely. 'Even if you've tried to deny it before, I can see it in your eyes and I can feel it in you.'
She could see that he didn't believe it, though. His eyes skittered and he closed them, laid back down on the cot and turned away from Rey. Just like he had done in their dream, she laid down next to him, resting her cheek against his back.
'Won't you ever just listen and believe in me?' she requested.
Ben didn't respond and Rey took his silence as uncertainty. Perhaps he would one day?
They stayed like that for several minutes before Ben could hear Rey snoring lightly and he turned to her uncomfortably, looking over her features. He touched the sealed wound against her scalp and he tried to get up, though struggled.
Eventually when there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead, he was sitting up and reaching for the antiseptic balm on the table closest to the cot. He opened the pot and lightly dabbed it across the wound on Rey's head and then took out the dermaseal and sprayed it over the area. When Ben was finished, he looked around the AT-AT and sighed, a hand pressed against the bandages covering his stomach, wondering how and why he was still alive.
He couldn't sleep and he didn't want to. Ben felt nothing but guilt and anxiety as he watched Rey sleep beside him. He'd been filled with fear when he'd seen Barthius strike her and he couldn't hide that sheer desperation drew him to destroying everything he had worked towards for the last 15 years. It wasn't that he wanted it back, but it made him see how much Rey was to him and how close he had been to losing her. He thought he had lost her and he was willing to dive head first into the jaws of death. Now he was wide awake and aware of how much wrong he had done and he was selfish enough to only have changed because he wanted her.
'Ben,' Rey murmured. He looked at the young woman and she was still sleeping, but stirred uncomfortably in her sleep. He watched her for a few more seconds before her eyes opened sharply and she looked about, frightened.
'What were you dreaming about?'
Rey sat up and stood, shaking her head. Then she touched her scalp and frowned. She didn't want to tell him that it was a nightmare, one where she replayed what had happened a few days before: When she had seen his blood crawling across stone and his breath leaving him.
Despite the block that her master had made, since she had come back to Jakku it had been ineffectual, slowly breaking down until the images were beginning to return.
'I'm going to have a shower,' she said quickly, her hands already moving to remove her tabards and tunic as she moved to the neck of the AT-AT, where she had built in a small sonic shower.
Ben laid back down, the pain in his torso threatening to overwhelm him. He had been used to having injuries fuel his every action, but now that they weren't, it was so much more painful. Rey eventually came back, her hair tied into a bun—covering the cut on her scalp.
'I should change your bandages again,' she murmured.
Ben wanted to reach towards her and touch her cheek, but he seemed to have had his fill of unaided movement. 'Are you going to leave me to this cot all day?'
Rey met his eyes and sat down on the stool after putting the bowl on the floor away.
'I can't run away, can I? How many days have we been here for?' he questioned.
She swallowed. 'Four days.'
He frowned and looked down at his body again. The trousers he was wearing didn't even belong to him.
'And your head?' he questioned. Ben couldn't forget the sound of the vibro-hammer hitting Rey. He couldn't forget how it had felt to believe he was going to lose her.
Rey touched the wound on her head softly and tried to smile. 'I couldn't do much more than have a stranger look at it and hope I could heal it myself. I suppose the doctor back on D'Qar would know if I'm going to die or not.'
'Don't say that.' Ben's voice was filled with such profound sadness that Rey felt ashamed and looked down into her lap.
'You carried me all the way here?'
Rey felt her lip twitch into a light smile. 'With some help from the Force.' She took his hand. 'The Force also helped me feed, clothe and clean you…that I had to do a lot.' Ben looked unimpressed. 'It was like looking after a baby.'
'Thank you for mocking the fact that I am an invalid, I appreciate it greatly.' Ben deadpanned.
'Do you know how to joke?' she questioned with a wry smile. 'I feel as if I have never seen you laugh about something that isn't an attack directed at me.'
He faked laughter. 'I'm not known for my humour.'
Rey was silent for a few moments, holding Ben's gaze with a light smile on her lips. 'Neither am I.' She sat on the edge of the cot again and her fingers went to comb through his dark hair. 'Don't feel burdened, Ben. I know you're feeling as if you should, but it's not necessary. You can't expect me to have done any different, can you? Would you not have done the same for me?' she asked, though her voice had dropped by her final question.
'Yes,' he replied simply.
She hesitated for a moment. 'What was that protocol back on Cantonica? I didn't see any ships leave…nobody even came after us.'
Ben swallowed. 'Snoke called it his fail-safe. If it was deemed necessary, he made a protocol for base destruction without notification. I don't think he fully trusted Hux's men and that would have been the fastest way to deal with an attempted mutiny, or even an infiltration. Destruction without warning, with him being able to create the cause.'
'So…it could look like an accident?' Rey asked.
He nodded. 'Though I doubt Hux would believe that.'
Rey nodded and her hand tightened on Ben's wrist as she looked at the wall. Was this their chance? They could just pretend that Ben had died in the explosion too. The First Order would never know.
'I'm sure he'll eventually figure out I'm still alive. Even if he has to dig through the rubble and identify the remains from the ashes,' Ben added in a low voice.
'Then we'll make sure to take advantage of your disappearance until then,' Rey responded.
Ben nodded and Rey helped him sit up again. She began to remove the soiled bandages and assessed his wounds, putting more antiseptic salve across them and rewrapping them.
'I wish I could do better,' she murmured. 'It's all I managed from four days of meditation.'
'You should leave me to healing now,' Ben responded. 'I'm a quick healer.'
Rey stood and shook her head. 'You know I can't do that.'
Then she was flitting around the small space, looking for the rations she had purchased from Niima outpost with some difficulty requiring a disguise and she poured them in bowls, making a small meal for the two of them, set beside two hot cups of caf.
Even though Ben didn't like it, Rey helped him eat and drink, knowing that holding up his right arm was painful with the damage Finna had caused to his shoulder and upper chest. The two spoke in small increments, Ben asking what had happened whilst he had been out of it and what she had left behind on Cantonica.
XxX
The next day Ben was much better. He could move around with relative ease, though Rey didn't want him to in case he reopened his wounds. She made them both meditate for several hours a day and tried to heal him as best as she could before she grew exhausted.
Together they were mostly silent. Rey was worried about what would happen when they left Jakku and Ben could feel her constant anxiety. He didn't want to bring it up and he didn't want to upset her anymore.
As the days continued to pass and Ben worked back towards his usual strength, Rey felt more at ease that he wouldn't just want to run away, that he didn't see himself as purely bad. She felt that her general presence and the meditation was making a difference. Ben even looked different and though to Rey it was mostly that he was out of his black clothing as she had sourced a pair of pale brown trousers and a tunic for him. He could have been anyone, he could have been his father's son.
Soon they'd have to leave, they couldn't stay here forever and she hadn't notified Luke, Leia, Poe or Finn of where she was. They would be worried and Rey wouldn't have been surprised if they were incredibly angry too. She had disappeared like an outlaw after a heinous crime and left little reasoning behind. Her master would have felt the most betrayed. She could have told him and she hadn't.
The two of them sat outside, backs against the AT-AT's giant robotic foot and their fingers entwined as they looked across at the dunes.
'Aren't you scared about what they will say?' Ben asked.
Rey nodded and swallowed. 'It feels like I'm a traitor.'
Ben snorted and Rey looked at him with a frown. 'If they think you're a traitor then it's hopeless.' Rey was ready to respond abrasively but Ben pulled her hand into his lap. 'If you could have, you wouldn't have loved me and anyway, you love being good more than you love me.'
'And you love me more than being bad.'
He paused and then nodded. 'I suppose you're right.'
Rey pulled her arms up to her chest and pulled herself closer to Ben, resting her chin against his shoulder and looking up at him. He met her gaze and Rey smiled, her free hand touching the stubble that had grown across his jaw.
'Am I sufficiently seducing you?' Ben questioned.
Rey couldn't help laughing and it bubbled and burst from her until she was laughing in Ben's arms, the smile on his lips visible as he held her close to him.
They could at least have this. Once they left Jakku this would be a distant memory and Rey just wanted to be able to remember something good, to feel as if there had been a time where they were happy and they weren't scared.
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