It's not easy.
It's straight-up hard sometimes, when she realizes that she's been drifting away from Rose and Poe for a while now — and it hurts even more when she notices that Finn's been idling his time with her away, making more and more excuses to ditch their hang-outs and sounding detached and abrasive whenever they message. It's always been the two of them, and it hurts knowing that she didn't mean just that much more for him. He was a brother to her, and he was her family, but she wasn't that to him and that — that's the worst.
She realizes, bleakly, that they might feel like they're punishing her for choosing someone they definitely don't approve of, and that's even worse. She's cursed and she can't get unconditional love, and that's all she's ever wanted —
And it's ironic, anyways, at the end of the day, that their efforts to dissuade herself from continuing her relationship with Ben have just brought the two of them closer together. Her therapist, too, had even judged her a little bit — asked her if she was staying with Ben because we accept the love we think we deserve — and she'd stormed out. How obtuse of them, how utterly absurd, for them to think that she deserves more than Ben, when Ben is everything. Yes, he'd made mistakes in the past, but she had too, everyone has, and nobody is irredeemable.
He's owned up to his mistakes, and they've chosen to grow together, and nobody else understands their kind of forgiveness. Love for her will always be unconditional. Her parents left her in the middle of nowhere when she was four because they loved something more than her family and that's utterly ridiculous and that's not what she's going to do. Ben, Kylo Ren, the family that they're going to build together, the one that they've already created, is always going to last. She would never leave. She's been left so she won't leave and she doesn't get why they don't understand.
"Is this — is this an intervention? This is ridiculous. I'm leaving."
"Rey, we love you, and you need to realize that Kylo is not healthy for you —"
"Oh-my-fucking-god. His name is Ben, and I don't have to fucking explain myself to you —"
"See, he's messed with your mind, Rey, he's got you thinking that he's changed, but why can't you see it, he hasn't changed, he was evil, he can't change."
She pauses and just stares at Poe, her mouth open and breathes heaving. "People can fucking change, Poe. You think I don't realize he's done bad things —"
"Bad things? Rey, I worked for him, I've seen him angry, I've seen what he can do, he's killed dozens of people in front of my eyes —" Finn is heaving and he looks like he's on the edge of tears and she just can't take it anymore.
"People can fucking change, and you all will never understand that, and I love him, and all I've learned from this is that you all don't. Fucking. Love. Me."
"Yes — yes we do, of course we do. We always have."
The three of them are sitting all around her, caging her in in some weird way, and she feels utterly trapped. It's strange how she used to feel safe around them, with the rest of the crew that she'd been in with for a bit, the Resistance, with their research and tech unit. Life for her had been a dream at that point — after all, she's desert foster-kid who barely was able to afford graduating Niima Community College — and she thinks, in retrospect, they'd felt like she was indebted to them, to Finn and Poe especially, for recruiting her and getting her out of her personal Hell. And they'd helped, for sure, but she wasn't that weak because of her upbringing. She didn't owe the world anything for giving her what she deserved.
So she hisses it, right at them: "I don't owe you anything."
And Rose hesitates for a second before trying to argue the opposite, but Rey's already tired of it. She'd asked Ben — then she'd known him as Kylo — to spare them once, and he'd done it for her. Now she has regrets.
Poe, normally less-than-composed, takes on almost a babying voice, but it's slight, almost like he's realizing that she's a lost cause. "Rey, I know you haven't always had the best relationships with people. But I promise you, Kylo Ren is not a good person. And even if he seems like he's changing for you right now, he won't stay at it. You saw what he did to Han. His father, Rey, why would he treat you any differently —"
She screams. She knows she shouldn't, but she's so sick of that argument. "Han left him, can't you see? Han left him like my stupid parents left me and we won't leave each other and you all will never understand and I don't even care anymore," she takes in a deep breath, "I'm fucking leaving, and I never want to hear from any of you ever again."
She looks back, once more, at their holier-than-thou piteous faces and storms away, out the door of the empty cafe, and lets the past die.
She slaps the car door and the sound carries, and she stares blankly at the wheel. More people she's leaving. Her head's aching from the resolute anger that's in her brain, images repeating.
First she sees her usual nightmare — it's her parents, leaving her on the steps of the local library. The picture is accompanied by broken bottles of vodka, trying to find her way out of the house but the door handle being too far to reach, shoving her tiny body through the small hole in the middle, heaving on the road until her neighbor finds her and gives her a few spare crackers.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she breathes, and panics, and she opens up the bottle Ben had insisted she keep with her at all times and tries to shove water down her throat, tried to drown it away, and then it's the next thing —
And Plutt's worse, and it's barely imaginable how she'd survived all those years, her feet are cut up and there are marks she'd scraped with her own nails on the ground next to the pitiful pile of rags she calls a bed, and she'd skipped school and signed her own detention notes so she could work and eat, and she remembers starving, the feeling settling into her bones . . .
Another deep breath. She's okay, now someone loves her, that won't happen to her, it's not like the last time. It's not like the man who'd followed her after a late night at the diner in college, who'd grabbed her skirt and tried to violate her, like the assault charge lined up —
She throws her head back and waits for her body to calm down before putting her keys into the ignition and staring ahead at the road. Not anymore not anymore not anymore.
Kylo — Ben, as she calls him, is waiting at their home for her. It's strange to have a place to call home, but she knows that this is it. This is everything, and he's her present and future now. It's a daunting thought, but she doesn't have anything to look back at again.
"Hey, sweetheart," he says, all soft eyes and muscled arms and dark edges, and all the parts of her brain which her former friends might have hit — he's killed dozens of people — fade away, because he would never hurt her. Ben had never touched her in a way she hadn't been alright with, he'd never yelled, he gave her his world. They don't know him like she does, that's all. She sinks into his arms, and he holds her close to his chest.
She silently falls apart, trying to hold in her sobs and mostly succeeding. When the first sound leaks through he pulls away a little and wipes away the tears with the large pad of his thumb and sighed. "What did they want to say?"
She just frowned, corners of her mouth shaking, and burrows herself deeper into his arms. He just clutches her and lets her ride it out, and the sun sets behind them, and it's nightfall by the time she slows down.
"I'm guessing it didn't go great."
She sniffs, pulls herself away. She still hates looking weak. "Yeah I . . . I don't think I'm going to be seeing them again," she looks at her shoes again, shuffling. "Ever."
His eyes soften any more, if that's possible, and he lifts her up into his arms. He's strong — she's reminded that no matter what happens, she's safe right now. Ben is big and strong and she can feel the raised skin on his arms, the scars littering his torso, that remind her that he's going to protect her.
He carries her into their bed, lies her down and tucks her in, and the last thing she sees before her tired, angry body succumbs to sleep is his light smile.