It's the look of pure, unadulterated panic strewn across Ben's face that knocks any protests out of her.
As she's dragged from the dimmed foyer hall, Rey has just enough time to throw a look over her shoulder. Poe and Finn are trailing behind them confused and dazed, as if they don't understand why she's choosing to go with Kylo Ren so willingly.
She remembers very quickly they don't know what he looks like – that she's the only one who knows.
The opaque glass door shuts and moments later they're in a dingy elevator, travelling towards a basement she never knew existed.
Awkward, tense silence fills the metal box. Kylo has released his bruising hold on her arm and drags a hand through his hair, another hand down his face. General Organa has her eyes focused on a spot on the floor. Both her hands are folded on top of the wooden cane, and the corners of her mouth have turned down.
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Rey's voice is quiet, but it fills the small space effortlessly. "Please."
Kylo refuses to meet her gaze, and the doors slide open to a dark, dusty basement, with barely enough light to see past ten meters. He storms out into the abyss and leaves a trail of cusses in his wake. Leia doesn't move for a long moment. She stares after him and sighs, and then shares a small smile with Rey. Rey thinks this is supposed to be reassuring – but the smile doesn't reach the General's eyes, and it looks closer to a grimace.
They walk out of the elevator together and as the doors close, Rey is thrown into near darkness. It takes a moment for her eyes to readjust, for her nose to become used to the damp stench, but she follows Kylo because what else is she supposed to do here?
"You called him Ben," Rey almost whispers to Leia. "But that man… his name is Kylo Ren."
Leia doesn't respond for the longest moment; she stares at Rey, considers her words. She nods as she turns back to the man in front of them. "My son is many things to many people."
"Your son."
"My son," Leia repeats. "Only three people in Coruscant know Ben is my son. Ben's father, Ben, and me. And now you do, too."
Rey's legs stop working. Her muscles don't cooperate, and her lungs refuse to expand, and every part of her is screaming with the revelation. Her horrified eyes lock onto Leia's gaze, but not even gentle brown orbs and calming words can pull her back. "You… you're the Resistance… and your son is Kylo Ren, the Kylo Ren, the same man who blew up your Resistance base, who killed his father, who traffics guns and drugs and people, and you know this, and… you let him do it?"
The corruption, the reason he's still alive – it all makes sense. Rey's mind whirs with the overload of information, the facts she's able to piece together, the connections she can finally make. Each one is a punch to the chest, a step backwards until she's turning and running as fast as she can towards the elevator button.
She will not be pulled into this world of treachery and betrayal, she will not be manipulated by her feelings, she will not be reduced to a damsel in distress, and she will not fall victim to the undermining criminals of Coruscant.
No other thought has ever been so clear to her.
Everything about this man and his world is wrong. Everything about Kylo Ren, or Ben, or whatever he calls himself, is wrong. Everything about the Resistance, the First Order, the Republic, everything, all of it, it was all a lie. The corrupted feeding the rich, the rich feeding the corrupted, a never-ending circle of hypocrisy and faux hatred.
Rey wants no part of it.
She wants to put as much space between herself and Kylo Ren as possible, take pen to paper and expose him, expose them all, for the soulless, hideous monsters they truly are. Then she wants to leave Coruscant for good.
She doesn't even make it halfway back to the elevator before a solid arm curls around her waist. Rey lifts of the ground with the sudden momentum, legs thrashing wildly, a guttural noise breaking from the back of her throat. She's a second away from screaming bloody murder when Kylo slaps his hand down on top of her mouth. The noise echoes around them and Rey kicks her legs out once more, but the action is useless. Kylo won't let her go. Won't let her scream. Won't let her run back to Finn, or Poe, or the exhibition. As her breath rushes against his hand, blind panic begins to carve its way into her chest.
"Rey, please," he begs, pressing his mouth into the space above her ear. "We need to go. I can't let you go back in there, I can't. I will carry you out of here if I have to. I'll tell you everything you want to know, but… please, please just come with us."
Rey screams. Screams against his hand as loudly as she can and thrashes just as wildly, but his arm is an iron cage and his hand won't budge. Hot tears burn trails down her cheeks.
From her peripherals, Rey sees the blurry figure of General Organa step into view.
"Allow me to explain, Rey. A mother's love is the most dangerous thing a woman can ever possess." Leia narrows her eyes, the steely gaze stilling Rey immediately. "If for a second you think I stand by and let my son ruin lives, you are sorely mistaken. I built the Resistance as a symbol of hope. A beacon against the corruption in this city. I know what my son has done, and I know he pays for it every night he goes to sleep. It doesn't mean I want him dead, and he would be if they knew who he was." Leia raises her chin a fraction more. "I did what I could to protect the people in this city... even if it meant killing Kylo Ren."
At this, her eyes lift beyond Rey's face. An unspoken moment passes between mother and son, and Rey feels small and insignificant and right in the middle of a conversation she shouldn't be privy to.
Kylo Ren had been put to death five months ago. Crime rates were at an all-time low; she'd not been able to work an angle for just as long, and she'd risked her own life just the previous night to try and find a story. It was either a happy coincidence, or the result of Leia turning over her son. Rey wonders whether Kylo knew this – whether this was a warning shot from his mother, or whether it was an unavoidable clash.
Her frantic heartrate slows, erratic breathing replaced by something she can more easily control.
When Kylo slowly releases his hold on her, Rey doesn't turn around. She doesn't move, nor breathe, nor speak, nor think. Brisk air claims the growing space between their bodies, and Kylo's heavy footsteps extend into the dark basement.
"I don't know the relationship you have with my son," Leia starts, motioning with her cane towards the exit, "but he's not been given many chances. I think he'd surprise us both if we gave him just one."
The words float around in Rey's brain, rattling back and forth. A true question of Rey's character lies beneath Leia's statement. It's a test and a plea, a double-edged sword. It reminds Rey of the Jedi artwork above them, and she finds herself nodding her head. "Just one," she says lowly, "Just one chance."
A warm smile greets her response, and Leia motions once more towards where Kylo has stormed off.
"It'll help if you start calling him Ben; makes separating him and his past a lot easier."
Leia starts the slow walk after Kylo-Ben-whoever, leaving Rey to make her own decision.
It doesn't even take two seconds – her legs move on their own accord, following the Resistance General. There are a million reasons to turn around, a million reasons to walk away and go back to her life, and she knows that if she continues down this path, if she follows after Leia and Ben, she'll never be able to turn back. But how can she ever begin to explain the fire he sets within her chest? He makes it feel as though her heart could leap out from her ribs, as though he'd catch it between his hands and devour it whole.
Rey knows him almost as well as she knows herself, and she doesn't know him at all, and it makes no sense. None of it makes sense.
Her feet carry her to the cobble steps that lead out of the basement. Leia ascends slowly and takes a helping hand from Ben, and when it's Rey's turn, when his dark eyes cast upon her and he holds his hand out, she doesn't hesitate. She slips her hand into his and he helps guide her from the dark abyss into the cool Coruscant sky.
Distant sirens echo through the night. Hundreds of people scream and rush for safety, even though they haven't a clue what they're running from, and the only thing Rey can look at is Ben's face.
"It was lovely to meet you, Rey. I hope the next time we meet is under less… trying circumstances." Rey's eyes dart to Leia, but all she sees is the mysterious woman walking towards unbridled chaos.
Rey doesn't realise Ben is still holding her hand until his is no longer there. A brisk chill takes the place of his warmth, and Rey feels the loss of it like a kick to her shin. When she turns back to Ben, he's already three paces away from her – and he's not slowing down.
"Hey!"
Ben doesn't turn around. Shallow rage blossoms, and Rey doesn't even bother to ignore the way it heats her chest or her cheeks. Her heels clack loudly on the ground, hair bobbing at her shoulders, and Ben doesn't expect her hand to curl around his arm or the power she puts behind it, and for a moment she has enough strength to still him. He stares down at her with cold eyes, but every second longer she stares back is every second longer he stays in front of her.
"You can't just walk away from me," she snaps, "I have no idea what just happened, who you are, whether you're Ben Solo or Kylo Ren and I don't know what you want—I don't know why you're in my dreams, or who I can speak to, or—"
Her words stop dead when Ben's hand lifts to caress her face. He's so much taller than her when they stand this close, and Rey feels the proximity with every beat of her racing heart. He brushes a thumb across her lip, draws it out from between her teeth, doesn't even seen his other hand move but there it is at her waist, fingers curling into soft skin. The dark brown of Ben's eyes swirl with danger. Her stomach churns with electricity.
"Rey? Rey, is that you?"
Whatever sweet, blissful moment of serenity they've found themselves in, Finn's voice shatters it so thoroughly Rey feels the electric pulse of it move through her body. She jolts back from Ben, eyes wide and mouth agape, a chorus of apologies and wordless thoughts trapped on the edge of her tongue. Ben's face changes so quickly she almost doesn't recognise who's standing in front of her.
"Rey?" Finn calls again, and Ben glances over her head. She can hear his thoughts as clear as her own – he wants to run.
When his eyes drop to back to hers, Rey gives a minute shake of her head, implores with as much of her face as she can. Stay, she begs, please, stay.
Ben rolls backwards on the heels of his feet. Steps back just the once. The momentum of it carries him back another step, and then another, and Rey can't begin to explain the way her heart aches at his retreating form.
Rey is nothing he expects and everything he needs.
He can still see the mourning in her face, the regret spread so clearly across her features as he walked away.
His brain is a constant battle of doing the right thing and doing the right thing for him. For the longest time, leading the Knights of Ren had been a feather in his cap. Look at me now, it screamed. A desperate plea for his mother's attention, a broken little boy angry with the world and all its misgivings.
Having her admit the role she played in his detainment and failed death validates some part of him he can't quite explain. He'd had a feeling. An inkling. It shouldn't surprise him. His mother is nothing but conniving, clever, smarter than he can ever hope to be. If turning him in was her way of teaching a lesson, she'd done a damn good job of it. Scared him within an inch of his life. He and his men haven't gone anywhere near drugs or weapons for months and the first job they manage to catch is a bust, costing them invaluable time and money. Ben doesn't believe in coincidence, but his mother… he believes in her.
So, he doesn't need concrete evidence when he tells the First Order messenger that the Resistance meddled with their affairs. He doesn't need to look very hard – he doesn't need to look at all. Leia Organa is the only person brazen enough to step up to the First Order.
And, when he's in the grand foyer with his eyes locked on the blinking red light, he has but one thought: his mother is the only person who is brave enough, smart enough, and powerful enough to bring the First Order down. On top of that, Rey… a complication he didn't see coming.
Ben glances down at his mini data-pad and reads the message from Cardo until the words blend into one long line of black text.
The bomb's a fake.
Somehow, it unsettles him even more.
The air around him shifts – the atmosphere drops, a chill passing across the hairs on his arms, a whisper of it against his pursed lips. He knows what this is without having to lift his head. He's been awake for hours since returning to the warehouse, thoughts of Rey burning into the back of his mind like a brand carved into his skull.
"Can we not do this now?" Ben murmurs, pressing a thumb into his pounding temple.
"I'd rather not, either."
Massaging his temples, Ben doesn't know what he expects to happen – he wants her close but he doesn't want her questions. The disappointment she'll feel when he tells her what he knows. The hatred quickly following. He wants to be able to sleep, but she's there every time he closes his eyes and every time he wakes.
Whatever seems to be connecting them doesn't stop. The silence settling between them is awkward and tense, and he doesn't know how to make it any different.
Ben glances towards Rey. Isn't surprised when he finds her pressed into a corner far away from him. He can't fight the bitter smile on his mouth. "You want to leave."
"I want to do many things," Rey replies, an edge to her voice catching him off guard. "None of them involve standing in this bunker."
When he peers closer, Ben's eyebrow shoots to his hairline. It's hard to see in the dark at first – but there she is, arms curled around herself protectively, a silent prayer he won't look too much. His eyes trail the length of her legs, from her feet to her knees to the smooth expanse of her thighs, the lacey black panties, the thin camisole barely offering any protection. Heat spreads across her chest, up her neck, blossoms across her cheeks. Ben meets her furious gaze and stares a moment longer. Then his eyes are back on the floor.
He knows if he looks again, he won't be able to control himself. Ben is many things, but a respectable man isn't one of them, and a patient man even less so.
"Welcome to my humble abode," he says instead, motioning around at the empty, cold space. "Do hope you enjoy your stay."
Rey snorts at his biting sarcasm but doesn't move.
He's not sure what annoys him more – the fact she won't talk to him, or the fact they're connected in the first place, or the fact he's too proud to apologise for walking away. Maybe it's the fact this stupid connection has landed Rey in his room in her underthings.
"What happened tonight?" Rey's voice is small with the edge from before a distant memory, replaced instead by tired pacing. "The news reports are saying it was a potential bomb threat. Is that true? Did you know it was going to happen?"
He's a glutton for punishment, it seems – lifts his eyes back to Rey's body, the way she's trying to protect herself from him.
"No."
Rey nods, a bitter laugh dropping from her mouth. "Of course not."
Ben's heart beats a little harder, a forceful thumping fuelled by hollow anger. "Is there something you want to say to me?"
Her eyes cast upon him, dark and unreadable, tongue ducking out over her bottom lip in barely concealed contempt. When her nostrils flare, Ben knows she's made up her mind. "There's a Resistance doctor who specialises in herbal remedies and some sort of energy reading. Poe thinks she'll know what it is connecting us, she might be able to help stop it."
"You told Dameron." Ben's voice comes out as a low croak, but the rest of his panicked thoughts go unspoken.
"I didn't tell him who you were, if that's what you're worried about," Rey shoots back, eyes icy cold. "Yes, I told him. I told my friends about this man who I see in my dreams and visions because I don't understand why it's happening, and because you won't even stay and talk to me about it."
"Yet you're the one who's looking for a way to leave."
Rey takes a step towards him, exasperation heightening her voice. "Leave? You're the one that runs every time you get the chance!"
The lopsided grin playing at Ben's mouth fades. He stares at Rey, remembers clearly the last two times they were together, the compromising position they'd both been in the previous night. Each time they'd found themselves in a weird dance, an encounter where they were inches away from each other, fully clothed but charged just the same, electricity swirling between them dangerous and intoxicating. When he stands, Rey retreats the same step she took just seconds before.
He replays the moment he caressed her face in the alley, then in the vision where she was sat on her bed, how soft her skin had been earlier tonight. Ben wonders whether kissing her now would be the same as kissing her in real life.
"You're right. I'm the one that leaves. I'm the one that turns and walks away, because I can't trust myself around you."
Everything around him is pulsing with insatiable energy – Rey is looking at him like he might devour her, and the way her chin lifts, the way her eyes cloud, the way she brings her bottom lip between her teeth, puts filthy ideas in Ben's head. Her beneath him, her on top of him, her.
Rey senses the shift in his posture before he does.
But Ben surprises himself. Pushes out through grinding teeth, "Do you want me to leave, Rey?"
A long pause echoes in the space around him. She doesn't say no, but glances between his eyes and his mouth so many times he surges forward, pushing her back so quickly she hits the wall with a thud. He drinks the gasp that flies from her mouth and presses his lips against hers, fingers gripping into the sinful skin of her waist. And there, he's done it, kissed her with all the fury and passion in his bones, and he pulls back with a silent prayer that it'll be enough, it'll be enough, it has to be enough.
Except it's not. She's a drug that pulsates through his veins remorselessly and ruins him completely.
Rey's eyes are closed, hands caught against his chest, body so small his hands almost span the entirely of her back. He can feel her breathe against his mouth she's so close.
"Do you want me to leave?" He asks again.
Silence echoes around them. A small frown creases the space between Rey's eyebrows. She draws her bottom lip into her mouth and releases a shaky breath, pausing for a long moment – but when she shakes her head just the slightest, Ben doesn't hesitate.
He reigns back the power in it, the urgency. Kisses her softly, kisses her so gently he doesn't recognise himself. He kisses her until her mouth opens, until she pushes her tongue against his, until she's got one of her hands clenched in the fabric of his shirt and the other twisted in his hair. Rey meets his slow burn with a raging swell, driving onto the tips of her toes and curling up into him with such force he's near knocked off balance.
Ben grips the back of her knee in a warm hand and yanks it around his waist, groaning when Rey pushes back into the grind of his hips. He lets his head drop into the space between her shoulder and neck, lips at the hammering pulse-point, tongue and lips tracing delicate skin.
"Ben," she rushes out quietly, repeating his name until he hums against her skin, "Ben, Ben, Ben, stop—"
"Shh," he trails off into her neck. His fingers inch past the elastic of her panties, drawing lower and lower until his hand is cupping the curve of her ass.
Stinging pain erupts from the back of his head. Rey uses his hair to yank him back, face somewhere between anxious and aroused, and the only thing Ben wants to do is kiss her. He settles for exploring the smooth skin of her thigh.
"Do you hear that?" She whispers.
Ben can't hear much over the pounding of his heart but strains his ears to listen. "Hear what?"
"The footsteps… someone's laughing."
Something uneasy pricks at his skin, a forewarning he's always been privy to yet never able to pinpoint. The same kind of nervous electric charge as the night his father was shot – the same kind the night he was arrested and thrown into the Barracks. Ben throws a sharp look over his shoulder, scanning the room for anything out of place. He can't hear the footsteps, nor the laughter, and it dawns on him too late – he can't hear them because they're here, in his room, even though Rey's body is still in Uscru District.
Ben's head snaps back to hers. "Are you in your room?"
Rey frowns, nods slowly.
"Lock the door," he murmurs, "Lock the door, grab something heavy you can throw, and do not leave that room."
thank you so much to everyone who dropped a review/favourite/follow, it truly means the world to me! apologies for the slower update on this, things are crazy and my writing mojo is taking the holiday we all deserve right now... let me know your thoughts on this one - whether I'm moving too fast with their characters or whether I should slow it down a bit... hope you enjoyed x