The dream was always the same.
He woke from it sweating, clutching the thin muslin sheets to his bare chest.
Ben sat up on the edge of his bunk and stared blindly out the screen door at the palm fronds swaying in the night breeze. The insects in this alien corner of the world had a different song than the summer cicadas in Indiana. He had grown so used to them he thought he might miss them, if he ever made it home.
Home.
Where was that now, he wondered as he sank back onto his bunk and tried to calm his breathing.
The thought of home with his parents and Lyn and the Chancellor tightened his diaphragm to the point where he had to remind himself to inhale, exhale.
The dream that woke him repeatedly these days had no discernible plot. It was a jumble of panicked feelings and images, and the Chancellor speaking cryptic, confusing things to him that made him feel small and needy. Like he couldn't live without the Chancellor's approval and guidance and that nothing, nothing he did was good enough.
Rey told him she dreamt of an island. They had lain entwined in her friend's cousin's bed and he had come close, so close to confessing his weakness to her, how he'd run away from his family and responsibilities and his whole damn future that lay so clearly and perfectly before him that he felt compelled to rebel against it. After she'd drifted off, he'd crept to the telephone table in the hallway. He pictured her island, a tiny, emerald rock in the middle of a stormy sea under a flat, gray sky.
"What city, please?"
The operator's disembodied voice jolted him to his senses. He couldn't make a long-distance call on a stranger's phone. Besides, what would he say to his parents?
He had replaced the receiver in its cradle and stared for a long time at his own reflection in the hallway mirror. He wasn't exactly sure what she saw in him. His face was… well, there were certainly better-looking fellows all around this place. He hadn't expected to meet someone here in this temporary stopover on his way to war.
Let alone marry someone.
Ben traced his fingers over the sagging mattress springs on the bunk above him and tried closing his eyes once more.
The nightmare vision of the Chancellor's face swam in front of his closed eyes. It was scarred and twisted, his skull completely bald, partly cleaved and caved in over his left eye. The rest of his face had shrunken in on itself, his mouth a tiny, saliva-wet opening from which a raspy, rumbling voice issued forth. Depending on how he angled his head as he spoke to Ben- the voice always seemed to come from above, as though Ben knelt in supplication before him- he looked either like a benevolent elder or an evil sorcerer.
The voice sounded like the Chancellor, and yet it didn't. It sounded partly like the creature Ben had imagined his childhood band of knights battling in the woods, his brother at his side as they conquered the darkness that was overtaking their designated territory.
What was it that had Rey written him about the past? Her last letter had arrived over six months ago, and when he was not dreaming of decrepit wizard fathers, he wondered why she did not write. Poe's explanation was reasonable enough, but here, alone and awake in the night, a dark, possessive streak in him compelled him to imagine her being willingly defiled by any number of other men. The compulsion grew stronger with each delivery of mail that left him empty-handed, and the more he looked at her pictures, now dog-eared from his repeated handling, the less he felt he knew her. Really, what resemblance did this comely vixen bear to the steely young woman who had let him pursue her? The smile that had once warmed him struck him as cruel and teasing, withholding her virtue in black-and-white. Look, it seemed to say, but you can't touch.
Still, he refused to share her with the others. If he couldn't have her, no one else could. And when he was alone and sunk into one of these moods, he allowed himself to imagine the depraved things he would do to her, how he would capture her and wipe that teasing expression off her face. He would carry her away, tie her up if he had to, and show her what they were meant to be.
He shook his head against the vision of the Chancellor and his perverted thoughts of Rey. Her last letter was tucked with the others in the back of his book. Rereading her platitudes about missing him and the banal goings-on at work and the city did nothing to soothe his nerves. Did she not write because she felt she had nothing to tell him?
Maz always tells me, The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. I suppose this is her way of telling me not to dwell on the past, and to look forward to our future. Do you think often of your family?
Oh, sweet, sweet girl. If only she knew. The more he tried to forget the past, the more he thought of it. What he believed had been buried dormant under a layer of ash was an ember that had flared unexpectedly to life with the slightest puff of air across it.
AN: Hello lovely readers! Happy New Year! I intended to finish this story before TLJ came out, but that obviously didn't happen. I realize this is a rather short update, but I just started a new job and you know how that goes. ;) I hope you're still reading and enjoying TSAB, and please consider this part 1 of 2 - part 2 is being written as we speak.
February 1945 was the Battle of Corregidor, which is considered the turning point in the Pacific front for the US in WWII. As you may recall from Chapter 13 (What'll I Do?) of Right When I Arrive, Ben wrote Rey a letter following the battle, and it was... not chaste. :)