—Chapter 12: Confrontation—
Back at the cantina, Rose, Finn, and Poe sat quietly back at their table. Poe was holding an ice pack to the back of his head, and their Twi'lek brandies had been replaced with water and strong black caf.
The cantina had settled down significantly since Rey and Ben had left, and the barkeeps had begun cleaning for the night. Amid the clatter and shuffle of the activity around them, Finn and Rose stared hard at their vexed friend.
Poe, succumbing finally to the stern looks he was getting, said, "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I get that I acted like an ass. I just wish any of you could understand how I feel about that asshole."
"You think you have that much more reason to despise him than anyone else? I was a stormtrooper," said Finn. "I watched him order the killing of that entire village back on Jakku. I saw him murder his father, toss Rey into a tree, and he sliced me up my back with his damn laser sword. I understand what it is about him that has you so pissed off."
"Then why does my anger come as such a shock to you? Why aren't you as pissed as I am?" asked Poe in genuine confusion.
"Because I'm willing to believe that people can change. I was conditioned from infancy to kill for the First Order, remember? I was terrified to tell Rey what I was when I first met her. I didn't think she would accept me if she knew, but she did. She was willing to look past what I was before to the person I was then, who I am now. She believed in me and trusted me. And I believe in her."
"And she believes in him, is that what you're saying? That we should trust him because she thinks he's a good person now? That's disgusting. This is totally different."
"It's only a different scale," interjected Rose.
Finn looked at Rose, who returned his gaze with a sad expression. Looking back at Poe, Finn spoke. "Someone I love once told me that we'll never win by fighting what we hate," said Finn. Rose smiled sweetly at him. "That we'll win by—by saving what we love."
Poe frowned, looking crestfallen. "That's all I'm trying to do."
"So is she," said Rose, sadly.
Tears pricked the corners of Poe's eyes, and Finn and Rose regarded him solemnly. Finn stood up, taking Rose by the hand to get her to follow suit. Finn rounded the table, grabbing Poe by the shoulder to give him a reassuring squeeze.
Finn was about to walk off, but Poe grabbed his wrist to hold him there. They exchanged a knowing and sympathetic look, then Finn patted him on the shoulder and nodded. Reaching for Rose's hand one more time, he led her away, leaving Poe alone with his thoughts and his lukewarm caf.
—
Ben had parked the speeder next to his house and now sat at his table with the lantern on low, reflecting on the evening he'd just endured. She was right that it hadn't been a total disaster, though the bad parts had gone about as badly as he'd predicted they would. He rubbed his hands together, reminiscing.
He had been lost in reverie, but then snapped back to awareness, listening. "Shit," he cursed, abruptly standing from his chair. He pushed out with his thoughts, mapping the area in his mind. Five of them. Two in the forest in back, three in the front. Blasters.
Ben had no weapons, but even unarmed, he believed he could handle five drunken Psadans. However, if he killed them, witnesses to the cantina scuffle would easily trace them back to Ben, and their tolerance for his presence on this planet would be at its end. He would have to neutralize them without causing serious injury. Removing his robe and draping it over the back of his chair, he prepared to face his attackers.
Stepping out of his cottage, Ben shouted into the darkness. "I'm unarmed! I have no wish to fight you!"
A blaster bolt came at him from the darkness, striking the corner of his house and blowing a big hole in it. Ben moved further from his home in the hopes that he could spare it from further damage.
Sensing his attackers closing in, Ben called out once more, "I don't want to fight you!"
One of the Psadans shouted back, "Of course you don't want to fight! It's five on one and you have no weapons!" The other Psadans laughed.
"I may be unarmed, but that doesn't make me defenseless."
"Our friend came back to us completely stupefied! Whatever you did to him, we're going to kill you for it, First Order scum!" The blaster bolts began to come, from various directions and with no apparent strategy. Even if Ben did nothing, the chances that they would fire past him and strike one of their own seemed a fair bet. Ben ran away from his home to the northwest, keeping the lake to his left. A few lucky shots required him to actually dodge or deflect their blasts with the Force as he ran.
Frustrated with their target's successful evasion tactics, the Psadans grew more frenzied, firing more rapidly. Ben reached out with the Force, gripping the blaster of the Psadan in front of him and tearing it in half. The rent blaster exploded, leaving the Psadan he had liberated it from momentarily dazed. He ran past the attacker, knocking him down as he went. The bolts continued to come.
With the Psadans now all behind him, he turned to stand his ground. The lake was to his right, the forest to his left, and his cottage in front of him. Wave after wave of shots came at him, but at least they were now all coming from one direction. He easily deflected the blasts with pulses of Force energy while he considered his next move.
Then, to Ben's horror, some of the attackers turned and began firing in the opposite direction, away from him. Rey.
The Psadan he had knocked down ran at him and was suddenly sent flying into the lake. Ben darted back the way he had come, toward his cottage and Rey. Her presence complicated things for him—prior to her arrival, their behavior had been entirely focused on him and reasonably predictable, in spite of their mania. Not anymore.
Rey was on the offensive, throttling her opponents with her quarterstaff and threatening to do them actual harm. He tried to project a warning into her head not to go too far, but in her fervor, she simply wasn't hearing him.
Rey had gotten herself in the middle of a trio of Psadans and was engaging with the one nearest to Ben. She choked him with the Force, sending him to the ground, clawing at his throat. The attacker behind her turned to fire, and with a wave of his hand, Ben hurled him backward into the dirt. He then made eye contact with Rey for the first time since she'd arrived, and was taken aback by what he saw. The fire in her eyes was stunning—fierce and terrifying. It impressed him, but also struck him as alien. Gripped by the marvel of her bearing, he was caught unaware by a blaster bolt from the forest, striking him in the shoulder.
Clutching his injury, Ben dropped to his knees. Rey shouted, emitting a blast of energy toward the forest that splintered the trees, knocking the Psadan who had fired unconscious. Only one attacker remained alert and a threat, and Rey quickly whirled on him, cracking him upside his head with her staff and knocking him to the ground, senseless. Holding her staff at shoulder level, she angled it threateningly at the prone Psadan as she aggressively stalked toward him.
"Rey, stop!" shouted Ben. "If you kill them, this will only get worse for us!" Rey stood there gasping for breath, shivering in her rage. She looked back at him, eyes pleading, and slowly lowered her quarterstaff. Ben stumbled to his feet and made his way over to her. "Just stop now, it's over. We need to get them out of here. Alright?"
Rey nodded her assent, breathing heavily. Her eyes had become clear again. "What do you want to do?"
"Okay," he said, "I'll pull the one out of the water and get him to go home, forgetting everything he saw here—just a basic Force suggestion ought to be enough. You find the other four and do the same. Can you do that?" Rey nodded again, and headed into what remained of the forest perimeter to find the unconscious sniper.
Ben breathed a cleansing breath, taking in the relative calm and surveying his surroundings. Rey had sent the Psadan far enough into the lake that he struggled to remain afloat. Spluttering and splashing, it was clear he wouldn't be able to make it to the shore without help. Ben used the Force to lift him out of the water and set him rigidly on the shore, whereupon he immediately suggested a return to the Resistance base. The Psadan repeated the directive back to Ben and trudged back the way he had come.
Once all the Psadans had been accounted for and sent blearily on their way, Rey and Ben stepped into the cottage to survey the damage to Ben's shoulder. Ben seated himself in a chair at the table, and Rey turned up the lantern to get a better view. Frowning deeply at the wound, Rey sighed, "Ben, I'm sorry, this is all my fault. I just—I felt them coming, and I just had to try to help you. It was like I was… consumed."
At these words, a memory surfaced, and he stared off into space for a moment as he let the images flow back to him. He could see his family sitting around a table. He was just a boy, being visited at his home on Chandrila by his Uncle Luke.
"He was consumed by fear of losing her—it drove him mad," Luke had said, looking grave. Ben knew they were talking about his grandfather, but he was too young to understand the meaning behind those words. It was years later that he would learn the truth of his grandfather's identity, and even later that he would learn what that fear had driven him to.
He was grateful Rey was at his back, examining his wound—she couldn't see the look on his face. "Just help me get this off, will you?" With his good arm, Ben lifted the handmade shirt up over his stomach, but needed Rey's help to shimmy out of it the rest of the way. The blaster bolt had carved a nice-sized hole in the garment, and left a mess of his shoulder.
"Somehow, this looks worse than the blaster wounds you had when you got here," she observed dismally.
"Hux was trying to kill me slowly. These guys weren't messing around, I'm sure they had their blasters set higher." He grabbed a rag off the nearby kitchen counter to staunch the bleeding.
"Where's your medkit?" she asked.
"In the trunk in the corner," he said, jutting his chin in that general direction.
She opened the trunk and sifted through its contents, returning when she'd found what she was looking for. She set the medkit on the table and opened it, peering inside.
"Dammit, this won't be much help."
"Just find the gauze and the tape. As long as I don't bleed to death, I'll be fine."
Ben sat still while Rey tended to his shoulder, setting the gauze in place.
"If you had taught me how to heal by now, I would be able to help you properly…" she berated, unable to help herself.
Ben elected not to respond, but that did nothing to deter Rey from grilling him further.
"How do you do it?" she probed, apparently still unwilling to let the subject go. "Please tell me. I want to help you."
"Rey, I keep telling you, if I knew how to teach it to you, I would," he said, looking up over his shoulder at her standing behind him.
She set the last of the tape in place on his back, securing the gauze. "There, you're all patched up, but I should have been able to do more." She gave a defeated sigh, casting the roll of tape back into the kit. "When you did it, what were you thinking about?" she pried. She still felt a reluctance from him when it came to talking about this, and it needled at her.
He groaned in frustration. "I don't know, I just tried to focus," he said, standing up and turning to face her. Leaning back against the edge of the table, he shifted some of his weight onto it and casually extended one leg out in her direction. "Why are you so annoyed at me about it?"
"Because I can tell you're holding back, and I just want you to be honest with me!" She tried to get up in his face to berate him properly, but couldn't—she was several inches too short.
He exhaled, "Look, I can't help you. I'm sorry."
"Then can you please at least tell me why?" Ben's apparent refusal to impart his secrets to her struck Rey as something oddly personal, like it was a skill he didn't want her to have, for whatever reason. Maybe it was the adrenaline still lingering in her system, but seeing him stand there, silent, unanswering—she was beyond being able to hold back at this point. It was too much, and she laid into him. "I've done everything I can for you!" she shouted. "Stuck my neck out for you! Trusted you!" Her face reddened from the pent-up frustration finally finding release. "Why are you keeping things from me?!"
And now it was Ben who had reached his breaking point. He lifted himself from the edge of the table, towering over her as he advanced. Rey took a reflexive step back, but otherwise showed no sign of relenting. Finally giving in to her demands for an explanation, he practically shouted in her face, "Alright, I know how I did it, okay? But I can't teach it to you—it's not teachable, you just have to feel it, and it happens!" He took another step towards her, edging her toward the wall.
"Feel what? How do you know I can't feel it?" She jabbed her finger into his chest, accusingly.
"Because I just know you don't, okay?" With his right hand, he grabbed her roughly by the wrist of her protruding arm, and shoved her up against the wall, pinning her arm next to her head. His left hand moved to her waist, holding her in place as he advanced on her, his face inches from hers. She gasped in surprise, and his eyes darted to her mouth. His breath was hot in her face, and her heart pounded in her chest. The fingers on his left hand moved ever so slightly, thumb slipping under the fabric of her tunic, brushing the skin below her ribs. She felt herself flush and instinctively arched into him. He was incredibly close, and the pressure with which he was holding her against the stone wall was only increasing. She felt darkness from him, but it didn't frighten her.
All of a sudden, he stopped himself, and he released her from his grip and pulled his hand from her waist as if it burned to touch her. Taking a couple steps back and casting his eyes to the floor, he studiously avoided looking at her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that."
Rey stood, rooted to her spot against the wall, breathing heavily and observing his retreating form. Stumbling slightly as he backed into the chair he'd been sitting in just moments earlier, he stopped withdrawing and looked at her from under his downcast brows.
"Let's take the day off tomorrow. No training. You should talk to your friends, and I have work to do here. Have to fix the wall…" he mumbled, gesturing to the blaster hole in the side of his cottage. "Take the speeder back. I'm pretty sure it's how the Psadans found me—probably tagged. Safer with you…"
He was rambling. Rey had regained her composure, for the most part, and stepped forward from the wall, smoothing her tunic back down over her waist. Inhaling and exhaling steadily, she nodded her head and walked carefully to the door, taking one last look at him before exiting. Once she was outside, her legs carried her on autopilot, and she boarded the speeder. The Force must have guided her home, because she certainly hadn't given any conscious thought to getting there.
