Leaving Dromund Kaas
They descend the steps slowly, half dragging Revan with them as they leave the stasis chamber behind. Though Revan's eyes are open, he's barely responsive. Jeyna tries to help him along, but Ben ends up supporting most of his weight as her own steps are faltering.
When they reach the bottom of the building, Ben's voice is tense. "This isn't good. He's in bad shape," he says lowly.
Jeyna grimaces, wondering if he can tell more than her through the force. "Is there somewhere we can take him to get help?"
She doesn't miss the reluctance in his response. "The Rebels will have medical teams at their major bases. We can try reaching them on comms, but I don't know if they'll give me the location of the nearest base. They probably won't trust me."
"What if we can reach Leia?"
"We can try," he agrees quietly. Jeyna is distracted as they leave the building, her eyes caught by the sight of fallen stormtroopers. They litter the walkway in front of the building, their armor showing signs of lightsaber damage. Some wear red armor instead of the usual white, but all are laying unmoving.
She stumbles at the sheer number of fallen, her eyes widening. None had given up, it looks as though he'd had to fight through them all. She cringes at the sight of their injuries, revulsion rising in her stomach.
"Try not to look," Ben orders. She attempts to listen to him, focusing her eyes on the path ahead as they head back to the ship. The planet is in worse shape than when they'd landed, craters from the bombardment marking the ground. Entire buildings have collapsed around them, leaving a thick layer of dust to hover in the humid air. They have to maneuver Revan around the rubble, and all the while he is silent, dark eyes unblinking. It's beginning to unnerve Jeyna.
They're almost back to the ship when she spots it: a First Order shuttle lifting off in the distance, and beginning its journey towards the Finalizer.
Ben's pace picks up immediately. "If that's Hux, there's nothing to stop him from blasting this city apart until we're dead. We need to take off before he gets back to the Finalizer."
Jeyna ignores the discomfort in her body, forcing herself to double her pace. Their ship, fortunately, looks undamaged.
Millennium Falcon, in Hyperspace
They make multiple jumps through hyperspace, due to Ben's paranoia about the Finalizer's tracking capabilities. Jeyna's relatively sure they haven't been tracked, given that any crew responsible for operating the tracking device would have been slaughtered with the rest. Regardless, they are going to need to refuel, wherever they end up landing.
She watches as Ben sends out the call signals on the comms relay, trying to reach the Resistance. Surely Leia would help them, if she got the message?
Jeyna drifts away from the comms room, headed back to the medbay. Revan had collapsed on the table there, and as she enters the room, she sees he hasn't moved. He looks unconscious, his head rocked to the side. She approaches him slowly, unable to help her curiosity.
His hair is longer than it had been in the holorecording she'd seen, his face covered in the scruff of his facial hair. He's wearing some sort of light armor under the robes, and her eyes scan it before landing on the belt that criss-crosses his abdomen. He carries not one, but two lightsabers. She finds herself reaching for them, even as she knows she wouldn't dare to try to take them.
Jeyna flinches, a surprised noise escaping her, when Revan catches her hand in his. She jerks her eyes from the lightsabers to his face, and his dark gaze pierces her. His grip on her hand tightens.
"You don't look like her," he rasps.
Jeyna pulls on her hand, but he refuses to release her. "I knew you wouldn't… It's been too long, the relation too distant…But I had foolishly dreamed you might," Revan whispers.
"I'm sorry," Jeyna answers uncertainly. She has so much she wants to ask him, but finds herself oddly silenced by his eyes, still focused so intently on hers.
"No. I am sorry," he corrects her. "I was weak." She can hear the way his breath catches on every inhale. He is struggling to force the air into his lungs, and she grows more concerned.
Revan's eyes mercifully leave hers, and she finally feels like she can think again. They dart around the small medbay, landing on the remains of HK-47. His face crumples in dismay when he sees the state of his former assassin droid.
"What did you do to my droid?" he asks, weak voice managing to sound accusatory.
She opens her mouth to reply, to apologize a second time, when she feels the pulse of the force beat through their joined hands. Revan's hand is flung backwards, away from her fingertips. She turns in surprise, noticing Ben has joined them in the doorway. His face is darkened with suspicion.
When Jeyna looks back at Revan, he is once again unconscious. "Did you just knock him back out?" she asks, confused.
"I don't want you alone with him," Ben says possessively, approaching the medical table. She watches as he pulls open drawers, removing equipment. "I don't trust him."
"You know it wasn't him, that hurt me? It was whoever is in Hux now," she explains quietly.
"I understand. But either he let them trick you, to lure you there. Or he did it himself, to escape stasis. Either way, he didn't care what happened to you," Ben says. She watches as he sets up a kit on a makeshift stand, infusing the bag of intravenous fluids with a bacta solution. She realizes Ben is right, Revan's own apology seeming to confirm what Ben has said.
"What are you doing? Do you know how to do an IV?" Jeyna asks finally, attempting to break the tension that has filled the small space.
He nods, looking agitated. "I know enough to hopefully keep him alive until we reach D'Qar."
"D'Qar?"
"I reached her on comms. The Rebels abandoned Endor for now. There were too many uneasy with me knowing the location. I'm sure they'll be overjoyed when we show up at their base on D'Qar," Ben grinds out, his jaw clenched. Jeyna watches him work, and recognizes one of the syringes he's handling.
"You're sedating him?"
"To conserve energy. I think his organ systems might be shutting down, after being in stasis for that long," Ben explains. Jeyna falls silent, hoping what he's doing is enough to help Revan. She had no idea Ben had medical training, and wonders where he learned it. He seems to be finishing up, cleaning up the supplies. Jeyna watches the drip of the IV flowing into Revan's vein.
"Do the names Valkorian or Vitiate mean anything to you?" she asks. He shakes his head. "We're going to need to talk to him again, once the sedatives wear off. We have no idea what we are facing," she muses.
Ben's eyes are focused on the unconscious Revan when he answers. "There were rumors."
"What kind of rumors?" Jeyna presses.
"Of an eternal Sith empire. One hidden past the edges of the galaxy," he continues, before his eyes rise to meet hers. "One that was only waiting for a leader."
"Was that supposed to be you?"
His lack of response is all the confirmation she needs. A tense silence falls between them before Ben breaks it, pulling a clean syringe from the drawer along with a bottle of bacta solution. "Your turn," he says quietly.
"I'm fine," Jeyna lies immediately. Ben only raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Really, I'll be fine."
"You're in pain," he says. "Even with the force, I can't fix it all myself."
"It's not that bad," she replies, feeling stubborn. She doesn't know why she bothers to argue. He can probably feel it, just as much as she can. The sensation of a small knife jabbing her side with each breath, the dull ache in her skull. The bruises that litter her body from her fall.
"I didn't react in time to catch you," Ben admits. "I panicked."
Jeyna watches him gather the still-capped syringe and bacta in one hand, before he approaches, holding his other hand out to her. She takes it, following when he leads her from the medbay, letting her hand relax in his warm grip.
Ben takes her to the refresher, sitting the supplies down on the small metal shelf before turning to fix her with a determined look. She freezes at the heat in his gaze, her body reacting with goosebumps as he steps close. She can feel his intent, pulling at her through the force. "Don't you want me to help you feel better?" Ben asks.
Her body reacts to the low voice he's used, an intentionally seductive tone. "Are you trying to seduce me into medical treatment?" she asks in disbelief.
The corners of his lips quirk in the smallest of smiles. "Is it working?"
"Yes," Jeyna admits. His smile grows, only to fall a moment later when he pushes the hair back from her face. His eyes darken with anger as he takes in the bruise on her cheek, from Hux, and the hand shaped contusion on her neck, from Revan. She wets her lips nervously as Ben leans down, his face tantalizingly close to hers. His hand covers her neck gently, laying over the bruise there.
Jeyna gasps as warmth floods her skin, and soaks deeper. Her eyes fall closed, all of her attention drawn to the sensation rising into her cheek, soothing the pain there as well. Ben's lips press to hers, softly, for just a moment. When he pulls back, the sting has vanished from her bottom lip. She runs her tongue over the spot that had been cut, and detects nothing but smooth skin.
Jeyna opens her eyes and finds him searching her face intently. "Do you want more?" he asks quietly. Her eyes fall to his lips, and she nods. "Then be good, and get undressed."
She complies, kicking her shoes and pants off as Ben turns the shower on. The small room warms quickly. She watches him fill the syringe, as she raises her arms to pull her shirt off. Jeyna winces as a sharp pain radiates through her chest at the motion, pausing momentarily before jerking the rest of the material overhead. She lets the clothing fall before gingerly lowering her arms again.
"I think you've got a broken rib," Ben says. She looks away from the needle in his hand.
"Let me guess. That needs to go close to the injury," Jeyna sighs. He nods. "Fine."
She looks at the shower past his shoulder, not wanting to see the needle approach the tender skin that covers her badly bruised ribcage. But she relaxes when she feels the warmth of his healing spread through the area, a moment before the sting of the needle biting her skin. The sensations blur together bizarrely, and she holds her breath until the sharp metal withdraws from the muscle.
He tosses the syringe into the sink, before cupping her face with his palm, rewarding her with a kiss. When he withdraws, she searches the injuries to his face. He's just as bruised and scraped as she is.
"I can't heal you," she remarks sadly. "I don't know how."
"I'll heal on my own," Ben assures her, pulling back to pull the badly damaged shirt over his head. Her eyes rove the expanse of his chest, teased even further when he begins undoing his pants. Jeyna forces herself to look away, stepping into the shower instead. The warm water feels amazing, and she focuses on rinsing the blood from her cut palm.
When Ben joins her under the water, her control shatters. The sensation of his wet skin against hers, the sight of the water running down his bare body, is too much. She holds onto him, stretching up to capture his mouth. She plays with his soaked hair, ignoring the pain in her side to run her fingers through it. It isn't long before he takes control of the kiss, and it becomes heated. His hands caress her body, the tender spots fading away under his touch.
She's vaguely aware of the warmth in her palm, the jagged slice in her skin knitting itself almost completely back together. Between his kiss and the hot water, and the leftover buzz of adrenaline, Jeyna finds herself getting carried away. She searches his body, running fingertips over the broadness of his chest and the swell of his biceps. But when she shifts, the now dulled pain in her ribs flares stronger once more. Ben pulls back immediately.
"We can't," he breathes. "You need to heal."
Jeyna sighs, letting her head fall back under the stream of water. It soaks her hair, stinging slightly where she bumped her head. "I wish I could use the force like you can," she admits after a long minute.
"You did use it," Ben says. "I felt it, when I was fighting. You lashed out."
"I…I don't know how," Jeyna replies. She watches as he pours shampoo into his palm, gesturing for her to turn around. She complies, tilting her head obediently when she realizes he's going to lather her hair for her. Her heart beats faster, somehow made nervous by the intimate gesture.
"It's a start. Maybe with training, you could do more," Ben says quietly. His fingers work her scalp, grazing carefully over the spot that is tender.
"I don't know. I think it only happened because I was angry," she says, distracted.
"Emotions can strengthen your connection to the force. When I was younger, that's the only way I could access it," Ben says. "It was only with training that I began to willfully control it. Turn."
She obeys, turning to tilt her head back under the water to rinse the suds from her hair. "But I'll never be as strong as you."
"You were strong enough to use it to survive," he argues. "That's all that matters."
As they finish washing, she can't help but wonder. Would she have ever been able to use the force, if she didn't feel it so strongly through their connection? What did it mean, that she had only been able to access it through anger?
Ben turns the water off, and they step out of the shower, wrapping themselves in towels. His hair is dripping into his face, and Jeyna can't stop herself from rising up on her tiptoes to kiss the water droplets off his jawline. He laughs softly, turning his face to catch her mouth instead.
His tongue teases her lips apart to taste hers, and she moans desperately against his lips. The desire between them rises, her body growing aroused as she remembers how they feel together, wanting it again. She lets her towel drop, pressing her bare chest to his damp skin. Her hands fall to grab the towel he's wrapped about his waist, thumbs sinking down alongside his hips.
Ben pulls from her lips with a quiet groan. "We need to be careful-your injury-"
"Then we'll be careful," she breathes, attempting to pull him back towards the dormitory. He complies for a moment before they are both stopped by the sound of the comms going off in the front of the ship.
