AN: Thanks again for reading and reviewing! Also, the TROS novelization has a scene where Kylo interrogates Chewie when he's being held prisoner – I assume it's a deleted scene, so I decided to reference it here.
"Dyad's Blessing, Dyad's Curse"
By EsmeAmelia
Chapter 18
Ben couldn't sleep. He'd refused the sleep aid on the grounds that it had made him feel sick this morning, but that left him staring into the darkness. It wasn't like he was any stranger to insomnia, but his arms were still throbbing with pain from his physical therapy, which was getting annoying. He had finally managed to sit up after Rey and Lando left, but that was only the first step towards regaining his strength.
That heart monitor was still beeping, beeping, beeping, which was also getting annoying. Why were the doctors still monitoring his heartbeat when he was out of the coma? Did they think his heart would spontaneously stop? Maybe it would – it wasn't like he was an expert on what happened when people woke up from comas after being an inch away from death.
After wanting to die.
"Mom? Dad?" he found himself whispering. "Can you hear me? It would be nice to dream about you again."
There was no answer from his parents – but there was that twitch in his senses. After taking a deep breath, he rolled over and sure enough, there was Rey. He could only make out her outline in the dim light tinted green from the heart monitor, but what he couldn't see he could sense. She was asleep, her soft breathing soothing his ears. He closed his eyes, thinking that maybe she could lull him to sleep . . .
"No . . . no . . ."
Those words shot his eyes open.
"No . . . stop . . . don't . . ."
Even in the dimness, he could see her body twitching in distress. Automatically, he reached out, ready to stroke her head and try to comfort her, but her next words froze his hand before it could touch her.
"Get out of my head!"
It was like he had been doused with ice water. Her words swirled in his head, slamming against his skull. The hand that was going to touch her instead pressed into his own eyes, shrouding him in the dark.
"Get out of my head!" she repeated, louder this time.
Ben rolled over to his side, facing away from her as his body started shaking, making the hospital bed creak, which made him think of prisoners shrieking during interrogations.
"No . . . stop . . . PLEASE!"
How he wanted to wake her, but what would happen if he did? If she woke up to the very face of the one who tortured her . . . no, he couldn't do that, even though every scream pierced his soul.
"NO! NO!"
He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to stop tears from pooling in his eyes. In his mind he saw her restrained to the interrogation table, her face scrunched up as he pried her thoughts from her. Her face merged with others – Chewie, Commander Dameron, men, women, humans, non-humans, many prisoners whose names he had long forgotten, yet all cried out in pain and terror, their voices mixing with Rey's.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Please wake up, his mind whispered. Wake up, Rey, wake up!
Still she screamed, making his heart race as if he were running for his life. "Wake up," he whispered, his arms wrapped around himself as if that would send him back in time so he could stop himself from torturing her and everyone else. "Please Rey, wake up!"
Finally he heard her gasp and her screams subsided, though he still couldn't bring himself to look at her. He squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could, willing himself to disappear from her sight, but still he felt her presence.
"Finn," she gasped out through a sob, "it was the dream again."
Finn. The name that stormtrooper had taken when he deserted. Now Ben saw himself back on Starkiller Base, beating the former stormtrooper into a coma and feeling nothing.
No, he hadn't felt nothing.
He'd felt rage, betrayal, and maybe somewhere in the back of his soul . . . envy.
Envy that FN-2187 could get away and he couldn't . . .
"He's here!" Rey's voice was short, raspy, broken.
Ben curled up into a ball as if that would hide himself from her. Disappear, he thought as desperately as if he were screaming it, disappear, disappear, disappear!
. . .
"He's here?" Finn exclaimed. "What do you mean he's here?"
Rey couldn't answer through her sobs. She tried to concentrate on Finn's embrace, inhale the clean smell of his pajamas, let herself dissolve into his arms and forget the dream, but even with her eyes closed, Ben's presence drove itself into her soul. She felt sorrow flowing from him, mixing with both the nightmare of her interrogation and the actual memory of it.
"Rey?" Finn asked in a gentle voice. "You're seeing him now? What's he doing?"
Still Rey couldn't answer as she sobbed into Finn's chest, her stomach flinching at the idea that Ben was seeing her like this, yet she couldn't stop crying.
"Please, Rey," Finn whispered in a fearful voice, "what's he doing?"
"N-nothing," Rey choked out. "J-just lying there." Lying there, yet she felt his psyche screaming stop, stop, disappear! and she realized she was the reason why. A sudden wave of guilt flowed through her even though her rational mind knew she'd done nothing wrong.
"Should we leave?" Finn asked.
"N-no," said Rey, gripping his arm as if wanting to hold him here. "If I try to get away from him the dyad will make me sick again!"
Finn apparently couldn't think of a way to respond, since all he did was hand her some tissues. After wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, she finally gained the courage to look beyond Finn's embrace at the former Knight of Ren. He was curled up on the floor, turned away from her, his hair mussed, his body wrapped up in the blankets as if trying to block out the cold, glowing eerily in the city lights.
Was she supposed to say something to him? Was he supposed to say something to her? Why was this happening?
"Rey?" Finn asked.
Rey took a deep breath to steady herself. "Yes?"
"Would he hear me if I talked to him?"
"I don't think so. We don't see each other's surroundings when we join."
Finn's voice was shaking. "Well just in case he can hear me . . ." He cleared his throat. "Ben Solo, even if you are supposedly light side now, I hope Rey's nightmares are giving you nightmares because you need to see what you did to her."
. . .
"I hope Rey's nightmares are giving you nightmares because you need to see what you did to her."
Ben heard the words in the former stormtrooper's voice flowing from Rey's mind, bringing a lump to his throat. Something was boiling within him – anger, grief, guilt? Maybe all of them? He concentrated on listening to his breath, his mind still shouting disappear, disappear, disappear! though the Force still wouldn't listen.
But maybe he shouldn't be trying to disappear.
After all, the former stormtrooper's words were true.
