Over the next few days, Rey finds some semblance of a routine. Every morning she meets Finn and Poe in the mess hall for breakfast, and then together they descend into the storage unit to meet Ben, Rose, and Virya for waltz lessons. Virya continues picking them into pieces, but her venom starts to lessen. She lets them work in pairs, then in a group with partner changes. This, Rey is told, is what will be expected of her at the Frost Ball.
It only takes a few sessions for Rey to stop feeling awkward with Finn and Poe, but she still feels self conscious whenever she spins into Ben's arms. In the back of her mind dances the memory of Virya and Kylo Ren, the regal couple commanding an entire room. She tries not to think what she and Ben must look like in comparison. What they will look like in front of the entire Inner Circle, Rey all stiff and half a step behind, relying on Ben to correct her missteps. Even when she makes no mistakes at all, it is a breath of relief when the music transitions and she can whirl away.
After morning dance, they break for combat training. Poe keeps offering to show Virya how to shoot a blaster, until one day she snatches it from him, clicks off the safety, and fires off two shots in an eye blink. The first narrowly misses Poe's left ear, the second his right, framing his stupefied expression with two smoldering holes in the wall.
Virya stuffs the blaster back in Poe's frozen hand. "I'm wealthy. Not helpless."
"Right," Poe stares with parted lips as Virya turns and primly sits on her crate. "Okay. Yeah. Great."
Rose berates him for the next half an hour about arming a prisoner.
Poe defends himself with a weak, "Rose, look at her. I didn't think she could find a trigger unless it was made of diamonds."
Finn refuses to work with Ben at first, until Rey explains that he will be helping them both connect with the Force. After all, Ben knows more about it than Rey herself, she explains, and Leia had asked him to help. Finn clearly hates the idea of it but he grudgingly goes along. It seems the only thing stronger than his dislike of Ben is his desire to learn about the Force.
And so together, Rey and Ben start teaching Finn. About both the Light and the Dark. And as Finn begins to better understand the concepts of balance, he is able to do more and more. He tempers his brutish fighting style and starts wielding the training saber with some skill. After a week, he can make a small object rattle when he tries to lift it of the floor. It is rewarding for Rey in a way that she hadn't expected. Even more satisfying than her own rocky training had been under Luke.
And it turns out the excuses Rey had given Finn aren't entirely wrong. Ben does know more about the Force than she had ever had the chance to learn, from Luke, Leia, and her own studies combined.
"In order to be powerful in the Force," Ben explains afternoon. "You must understand your own motivations for using it. Only when your mind is clear will you be able to align the Force to your cause."
"Is that why you were so much more powerful when you were with the Order?" Finn asks a bit acidly. "Because you weren't trying to be anything more than a-"
"Finn," Rey warns.
But Ben answers anyway. "No. I had more power then because I hadn't given it all up to save Rey's life."
That shuts them up. Both Finn and Rey. Ben holds Finn's gaze until the other man looks at the floor. Rey clears her throat, breaking the brief but awkward silence.
"Lets focus on the lesson, shall we? Close your eyes, Finn. Search inside yourself and tell us why you want to use the Force."
Finn closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I want to use the Force to protect people."
"Who," Ben presses. "Be specific."
Finn opens his eyes. "What do you mean, who? The ones who need protecting."
"Almost every life in the universe needs protection from one thing or another. But who do you carry closest to you? The innocent? Younglings? Other reformed storm troopers?"
Finn glares. "I don't know, all of the above? What kind of sick bastard wouldn't protect the innocent?"
"We're not saying you wouldn't," Rey steps in. "I know you'd protect them if the need arose. But Ben's asking what drives you. Whose protection do you value most?"
Finn's expression is of barely contained frustration. He thinks this exercise is a waste of time.
"If you can't frame it in the positive, try in the negative," Ben says. "What keeps you up at night? Gives you nightmares? The answer is different for each of us, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. When you follow the root of your desire to protect, there's always some thing or some one at the base of it. What's yours?"
Finn glances at Rey.
She nods at him encouragingly.
Finn sighs, closing his eyes and resuming his meditative posture. "I guess… I don't know, my friends. My family."
"Good," Ben says. "And why do they need protection?"
Finn frowns slightly but doesn't open his eyes. "Something might happen to them. They're warriors. They do dangerous things. I want to help. To keep them safe."
"Don't all warriors do dangerous things?" Ben presses. "Isn't that risk something they've taken on willingly? That they've trained for?"
"Yes," Finn answers.
"And haven't your friends proven themselves as some of the strongest men and women in the universe?"
"…Yes."
"So," Ben says gently. "Why do you feel such a deep, driving need to protect them? There are certainly others who need it more."
Rey glances at Ben. His gentle, encouraging tone betrays no sign that he already knows Finn's answer. Instead, Ben is giving his student the space to discover it for himself.
"Because," Finn says, and Rey can practically feel him sifting through the sand of his mind, digging for a kernel of truth. "Because if anything happened to them, I'd be alone again. Like before, I'd… have nothing."
Finn's eyes open, clouded with confusion. He seems almost taken aback at his own answer. Troubled by what he's found.
"So the feelings you have," Ben says, "the drive to take the Force and become stronger. Part of it is because you want to protect others. But beneath that, there is fear. Fear of losing your friends. Fear of having nothing. That fear is powerful but also dangerous, Finn. To move forward in your training, you have to acknowledge it. And then, overcome it."
Finn frowns. He opens his mouth to protest or deny, but the words don't come.
"It's alright," Rey says assuringly. "I was afraid too once. Afraid of being alone. Afraid I'd lost people who loved me before I even got a chance to know them. I thought the Force was a solution. I tried to use it. To make it show me a place where I belonged. Instead it brought me to darkness and no answers. I felt betrayed. More alone than ever." Rey glances toward Ben. She smiles faintly. "But I wasn't. And you don't have to be either."
#
The generator goes on the fritz again, to Rose's sleepless frustration, plunging the ship into red emergency lighting and frigid temperatures without warning. Whenever it happens late at night, Rey always finds herself standing outside Ben's door, her blankets in her arms, asking herself what in the Force she's doing, but knocking anyway. He always lets her in without asking, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. As if she lives there with him in that little room. She wonders, if she were to just open his door instead of knocking, would he even mind?
Most nights he's up researching dyads, no matter if it's two, three, or four in the morning. The bed is always cold and neat and the books are all dogeared and yellow in a halo of his flashlight, which he's taped to the wall for power cuts. Wordlessly, Rey throws her blankets on top of his and burrows under the double layer to protect against the chill. She leaves a space for him in the narrow bed, even though it means cramming herself flush against the wall until her shoulder aches. He almost never takes her up on the unspoken offer, staying up to read instead. But sometimes, if she goes completely still so that he thinks she's sleeping, he'll softly lift the blankets and lay alongside her for an hour or two. Never touching. Never speaking. He is always completely still beside her, which is how Rey knows he doesn't want her to wake. He doesn't want her to know.
In the mornings, when she sits to rub real sleep from her eyes, Ben is always back at his desk, as if he'd never left it. She plays along and doesn't bring it up. She doesn't even mention the fact that she comes over whenever the generator fails. She tells herself its because it isn't worth mentioning. It's not a big deal. But really, she's afraid that if she acknowledges it, he'll stop opening the door.
#
One day during Force exercises, Finn and Rey share the Force. It isn't intentional. At least, not on their part. One moment they are simply doing a guided meditation, following Ben's instructions, and the next they are linked. It is not what Rey and Ben had had at the auction house. It's nothing nearly as powerful or profound. It's more like someone flips a light on the other side of a window, and Finn's shadow is behind a pane of frosted glass. Rey startles, nearly shattering the fragile connection, but Ben grips both their shoulders tight.
"Don't open your eyes. Either of you. Don't break your concentration. You're connected in the Force. Finn, there's an energy inside her. Can you feel it?"
"I - y-yes of course, I can feel it," Finn stammers. "It's too much to not feel."
"That's the Force. And you're right, she has too much of it. She is unbalanced. If you think you can manage, I want you to take a little from her. Do you think you can do that?"
"I'll try."
A foreign presence tugs on her, as if someone has found a loose thread and is trying to pull it straight through her skin. Rey tenses instinctively. It feels all wrong.
"Don't fight him, Rey." Ben says softly, his hand firm on her shoulder. "Don't close him out. Let him help you."
And so, because Ben asks it of her, Rey forces herself to relax. She even tries to push a little of her power out toward Finn. Judging by his sharp exhale, it reaches him. And then Rey feels something, like an unspooling of her insides. A vague but uncomfortable feeling. The Force is passing from her to Finn.
"Alright," Ben says. "That's enough for now."
Rey opens her eyes.
"We did it?" Finn turns to Ben, forgetting his mistrust of the man as he looks to him for approval. Ben nods, and Finn beams at Rey. "Yes! We did it! Rey, we're Force sharing! We're going to save you!"
Rey forces a smile and nods. But as soon as Finn stands to tell Rose and Poe, Rey looks to Ben.
A smile is trying it's best in the corner of his mouth. But the look in Ben's eyes hollows out her chest.
"Congratulations. Now your life won't be in constant danger anymore."
"Ben," Rey reaches for him, seeking out his hands. "What did you-"
"Shit." The loud scrape of a storage crate slices through Rey's question. The whole room turns to see Virya suddenly standing, staring down at her handheld comm device. The Vorian swears again.
"What is it?" Rey asks, standing along with Ben. "What's wrong?"
Virya just stares at the screen, her dark eyes rapidly scanning text.
"You okay there, Princess?" Poe asks, keeping a wary hand on his blaster as he steps closer.
Virya looks up in a flutter of lashes. Her dark eyes immediately lock onto Ben, as if there's no one else in the room. "It's the Inner Circle's private channel. They've just sent confirmation."
"Confirmation of what?" Ben is striding toward her, already reaching for the device.
"Is it the Ball?" Finn asks. "Are they moving it like the auction?"
Virya lets Ben take the comm device straight from her hand.
"It's Rosshel. He's dead."
center#/center
Rose takes Virya back to her rooms while the others go straight to Leia's quarters. Rey, Ben, Finn, and Poe, each instinctively post up in the corners of the room. The General arrives still dressed in her debate suit, having left her political meetings on emergency notice. Once she hears the news she sends C-3P0 to tell the Council they'll have to reconvene tomorrow.
"Do we know what actually killed him?" Leia asked.
"The official party line is that he's been in critical care since the explosion and only just died from his injuries today," Ben says, thumbing through the alert on Virya's comm device. He had kept it without even a word of protest from it's owner. "But I find that unlikely. Rosshel had access to the best medical teams in the galaxy. Either someone got to him later and is covering it up, or he's actually been dead since the explosion and it's taken them this long for his followers to admit it."
Leia sighs, rubbing at her eyes. "That's two of the five families dead in a matter of months. And us without any grounds to make any official arrests. This is falling apart faster than I'd hoped."
"Sorry," Finn interrupts. "But I don't see the problem here. Isn't it a good thing if we let them wipe each other out? Less work for us, right?"
"Yeah," Poe agrees. "What he said."
"Except they're not wiping each other out," Ben corrects. "They're consolidating power. Once they agree on a single leader to unify behind, it'll be impossible to stop them without starting another war. We have to dismantle them while they're still fighting amongst themselves."
"I need to make some calls," Leia says, turning to wheel out of the room. "And tomorrow, I'll have to propose a plan to the Council. I want you all to join me at that meeting tomorrow."
Rey blinks, taken aback. Leia has never invited her to join one of her political meetings before. And Ben's presence would be sure to ruffle some feathers. For obvious reasons. "You want all of us?"
Leia raises an eyebrow. "Unless you have better things to do?"
"Er, no." Rey says, heat rising to her cheeks. "Of course not."
"What bout Virya?" Leia turns in the doorframe, directing her question at Ben.
"What about her?"
"She knows the Inner Circle. She probably has the best guess at which of the three will be the next to seize power. I'd like to have her perspective in the meeting, if you think we can trust her."
Ben shakes his head. "No. I'll question her directly. But I wouldn't bring her into a Council meeting. Her current situation notwithstanding, at the end of the day she's still a Vorian."
Leia purses her lips, not liking Ben's answer, but she nods and rolls out the door. Once it closes, Poe speaks up from his corner.
"That was a little harsh, wasn't it? We're giving you a second chance based on good behavior."
Ben's glances across the room. "Your point, Dameron?"
"My point is that Virya has been pretty loyal to you, even though we've only treated her like a glorified prisoner. And Leia's right. We could use her help."
Ben shakes his head, already leaving the room. "The man she's so loyal to doesn't exist anymore."
#
That night, Rey hopes for the power to go out. She wants to see Ben. She wants to ask him a dozen questions. Like if he'd knowingly been coaching her and Finn toward Force sharing. And if so, why hadn't he just down it with her himself? And if he thinks Poe's right. Are they being too harsh toward Virya and putting themselves at a disadvantage for it? Is Ben only pushing Virya away for Rey's sake?
She waits until midnight, then decides she isn't waiting anymore. For the first time, Rey kicks off her sheets and finds herself in front of Ben's door with the power still on. Her skin is it's normal shade of milky fair, not bathed in the glow of emergency light red. The gentle current of heat blows from the vents in the wall. Still, Rey knocks, expecting his door to slide open immediately.
It doesn't.
"Ben?"
She wonders if he can even hear her through the solid steel door. She knocks again. No response.
Maybe he's in the shower, she thinks. Maybe he's actually asleep for once. After all, this is much earlier than her usual night visits. And he wouldn't be expecting her with the power still on.
Rey starts back toward her room, but stops at the thought of waiting any longer. Just the idea of it drives her up a wall. So instead she turns, gives one more knock, and then presses her thumb onto the lock pad. The door flashes green and sighs open, rolling an inch from its frame.
If he's in the shower, I'll just wait for him to finish. And if he's actually asleep, I'll…
Rey doesn't finish that thought because Ben's room is empty. The bed is made and the desk chair is unoccupied. The door to the bathroom sits open, no lights or the sounds of running water from within. Rey hesitates, taken aback. The door rolls shut behind her.
Rey stands in Ben's room, wondering where he could be, trying to silence her worst fears stirring in the back of her mind. The ones that tell her it's finally happened. She's come to find him and he is simply gone. Vanished again. She reaches for their bond and scrapes along its jagged edge. She swallows the familiar pain along with her frustration.
Alright. Calm down. He's just gone somewhere for now. The mess hall or the medical wing. He'll be back. He'll be back soon. Rey recognizes these instincts from her childhood, a mental safety blanket so well used it's frayed along its edges. But still, she clings to it. He's still on the ship somewhere. He'll be back. And if you leave to look, you might not be here when he does. It would be better if you waited. If you stayed right here.
Rey walks over to the desk chair, the place where he always is. It is an exact replica of the one in her own room, but somehow she feels closer to him when she sits in it, occupying the same space where he spends so much time. Thinking instead of sleeping. Waiting for her breath to slow in sleep.
Her gaze wanders from the bed to the books, piles of research on dyads and the Force. It occurs to her that she's never looked through any of them. She's left that mostly to Ben, despite the fact that it's her life on the line. Despite the fact that she also wants their bond repaired. She takes the volume closest to her, opening to a dog-eared section with a bookmark of paper scrap. Ben's handwriting is all over the pages, underlining paragraphs and circling relevant passages, making little notations in the margins.
"Forging a dyad requires two willing subjects with perfectly matched desire," she reads aloud, following the marks of Ben's pen. "If one party holds a lesser desire than his or her counterpart to be joined, the two may never be one. For this reason, almost all attempts to create a dyad have been unsuccessful. Most dyads occur naturally, created by the Force itself. A list of known dyads include…"
Rey trails as the passage digresses into a list of historical dyads. It is surprisingly short and offers no color beyond a set of names. She flips more pages until she finds the next section marked by Ben's hand.
"A dyad is the purest bond within the Force. As such, they embody all of its aspects. Their primary function is to serve as an agent of the Force's highest ideal… balance."
Rey pauses, not because the word strikes her particularly but because it had clearly meant something to Ben. That single word, balance, is underscored twice with heavy, jagged lines. As if that weren't enough, he'd also gone back and circled it in a wide loop, giving the impression of a snare. Rey runs her finger over Ben's pen markings. He'd pressed hard enough to nearly break through the page.
"Through balance the dyad is created. And balance the dyad shall restore. We must pity-" Rey falters, frowning as she takes in the following line. "… pity the two that are one, or perhaps better called the one divided in two, fated to share only in the dyad's incredible weight. For all others, they are the heralds of balance. Yet their own existence is unrivaled both in power and in sorrow."