A/N: I do not own Star Wars. I am merely playing with some of the characters.
Here we are again with another chapter! As always, please let me know what you think!
Chapter Seven
Rey had been told to go to the junk shop to make up for the time she had been missing.
"If I go out of business because of you I promise you will be making that money up to me one way or another," Unkar had snarled, his hot breath in her face as he looked her up and down with appraisal. "I never would have taken you off your parents' hands if I had known you were going to be this much trouble."
Rey had said nothing, knowing anything she had to say would only make things worse. In her fifteen years with Unkar and his pain-in-the-ass son, she had learned that she fared better if she kept her mouth shut and her head down. She'd stood up for herself a lot more when she'd been younger and thought she could fight her way out of her situation. When her words had been met with fists and her anger met with raging fury, she had given up for the sake of self-perseverance.
The junk shop was the slightly smaller building beside their apartment, which was convenient because Unkar never let her use his car. It was a family car, which meant only family could drive it. He had made it clear enough to her through the years that she wasn't family; only a means to an end.
She ignored the looks Unkar's employees gave her as she entered the junk shop. She shrugged off her jacket, threw it on her guardian's desk in his closet-sized office, then grabbed her toolbox and went to work. The sooner she could get started, the quicker her mind would stop thinking about Ben and his gorgeous apartment, his ridiculously comfortable furniture, and his delicious food.
No one had ever cooked her dinner before. At least, not that she could remember. Unkar and Atkin fed her when she was too young to do it herself, but the moment she could start she was rewarded by being told her meals were on her. Unkar would buy groceries, cook for himself and his son, and she would be forced to make do with what was left. She had never been allowed to use the stove, so she either used the microwave or fixed sandwiches, cereal, or anything else that didn't require a ton of effort. For Ben, a man who had left a terrible first impression on her, who she had thought would be no different from any man other than Finn she had ever met, to cook her something when he hadn't known her longer than a day was something she…wasn't used to. It was utterly foreign, and she wanted more of it.
As she began to tear apart the old convertible to salvage any working parts, ignoring the flare of pain that coursed through her entire body, she mentally berated herself for being so foolish. A man taking care of her could only mean one thing, and she refused to lower herself that far. As much as the Plutts threatened to use her in that way in order to make even better money she had never let it happen, though she suspected it had more to do with Atkin's strange possessiveness over her than any claim she had over her dignity. If Atkin wasn't in the picture Unkar might very well follow through with the threats he'd been making since she was thirteen.
It was no use thinking about it. Until she could save enough money to buy a bus ticket to Arizona, she just had to grin and bear it. She figured she had enough saved that it would only be a couple more months. Three tops, and then she could put all of this behind her and start over. A fresh start was what she truly wanted, not someone who took her in because he felt sorry for her. She would make her own way. All she needed to do was be patient for a little while longer.
Ben imagined himself storming into the apartment and tearing Rey out of Atkin's arms at gunpoint if need be. He imagined them in the middle of another argument that turns physical quickly and he uses the gun to get him to stop hurting her. Or he simply barges in, shoots everyone who stands in his way, then finds Rey and carries her out, telling her not to look as he maneuvers through the bodies of people who had done her nothing but wrong.
But Ben didn't do any of those things.
Instead he kept the gun out of sight and rang the intercom of the buzzer with the name PLUTT taped beside it. To his surprise, he was buzzed up without an explanation to his presence. He didn't question it as he went up. They were probably expecting company.
When their apartment door opened a moment later, a man who could only be Atkin's father filled the doorframe. He could immediately see how Hux could be intimidated by this man. He was easily one of the largest men he had ever seen. As he stood imposingly, staring down the end of his nose at Ben like he was looking at a bug he wanted to squash, Ben was struck with the thought that this man would have made a good bodyguard.
"You have a lot of nerve coming here," the man all but growled as he kept his penetrating gaze pinned on Ben.
What the hell? Ben tried not to look as confused as he felt as he replied coldly, "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
"No, and that's the problem. What kind of business do you have interfering in my family's personal affairs?"
"I make it my business when your family affairs involve beating up helpless women in abandoned alleys like the low-life thugs you are," Ben replied coolly, surprising himself with how calm he sounded when his insides felt like a hurricane of emotion was brewing, just waiting to be released.
At that the man scoffed. "If you mean Rey, the girl's hardly helpless. She'll hand your ass back to you in a fight if it comes to that. She doesn't take any shit from anyone." Then, with a nasty sneer Ben immediately wanted to wipe off his face, he added, "Except when she knows what's good for her, if you know what I mean."
Ben did know what he meant. That was why his fist landed on his jaw on pure instinct. Unkar's reaction time was slow due to his enormous bulk. It made what Ben was about to do so much easier.
He found the hilt of the gun and pulled the firearm out of his waistband, then landed one more blow to Unkar's face. The brute force he was met with, combined with his shock at the attack itself, made it all too easy for Ben to put him on his back.
"You fucking…" Unkar snarled as he struggled to put himself into an upright position, but he froze the moment he saw the gun pointed in his face.
"Where is she?"
"Like I'd tell you, you son of a bitch!" Unkar kept his gaze firmly on the gun as he tried once again to pull himself up.
Ben waved the gun in front of his face almost carelessly, which made the bigger man stop again. "If anyone's going to be throwing insults around, it'll be the man with the weapon. Now I'll repeat myself slower this time in case you were simply too stupid to follow along the first time. Where. Is. Rey?"
To Ben's simultaneous astonishment and annoyance, Unkar Plutt still did not seem to understand the severity of the situation because he snapped, "What makes her so special to you? Why go to all this trouble for her? If you knew who she really is…what she really is, you wouldn't bother."
"So enlighten me," Ben replied through clenched teeth, keeping his grip as steady as ever as he lifted the gun to point right between the man's eyebrows. "Keep in mind that the longer you talk, the more pissed off I'll be at having to keep listening to you."
Glaring murderously at him, Unkar said quickly, "She came to me when she was four years old. Her parents used to come to me from time to time, either for a loan or a fix. Biggest bunch of drugged up bums I'd ever met. Couldn't go more than a day without a fix of something. Booze, coke, heroin, didn't make any difference to them. But they couldn't afford to fund their habits, so they would come to me because they didn't have anywhere else to turn."
"Honestly, I was surprised when they came by one day with a kid. Didn't even know the woman was pregnant, she was so damn small. Both of them were just skin and bones. The little money they did have went to the drugs rather than food. Beats me how they thought they could afford a child, but for four years they'd somehow managed it."
"They came around that day like any other day. I thought they were after another quick fix, but instead they come to me with some cock-and-bull story about needing a loan to help them start a better life. Like a fool, I believed them. They said they needed twenty grand to get them started but they didn't have anything other than the girl as collateral."
Ben felt sick to his stomach as he realized the direction in which this horrible story was about to take.
"Six months. A year, tops. After that, they said they'd come back for her. I shouldn't have agreed to it, but I was a softie at heart. Still am for continuing to keep her around even though it was obvious they were never going to come back. Those two needed drugs like a fish needs water. What they didn't need was a kid to tie them down."
"So why exactly do you keep her around?" Ben couldn't help but ask. "You could have called social services on her. She wasn't your responsibility."
At that, Unkar shrugged. "Figured I could use the help. I was a single dad raising my son on my own and a business owner at the same time. Didn't have time to manage both so I kept her around as…"
"Slave labor?" Ben cut in furiously.
"My assistant," Unkar replied, his voice dangerously low. "Which she has been ever since. Little bitch had to earn her way somehow. Turns out she's quite the mechanic. Can fix things most would call beyond hope. She's so small she can fit places that would otherwise stay dirty. Plus," he added with a sadistic smile, "she keeps my son from getting too lonely."
"I think I've heard enough," Ben cut in tiredly, unsure which emotion as winning out in his mind: anger or disgust. He waved the gun again, satisfied to see the control Plutt seemed to have thought he'd gained disappear from his eyes. "Now let me tell you how this is going to play out. You're going to stay here while I go get Rey. You aren't going to move from this spot until both of us have long since gone. You're not going to call the police because you know it's only going to incriminate you. I know about the drug ring and the child labor, and I'm pretty sure I could get my mother to pull some strings to slap you with a kidnapping charge. She could probably do it, too, considering she's a state senator."
"You sonofa…" Unkar began, his large face tomato red with fury, but Ben cut him off with yet another wave of his gun.
"The next words out your mouth better be Rey's location, or I'll make sure you're never able to talk again."
Unkar seemed to consider for a moment before he reluctantly growled, "The junk shop beside this building."
"Now was that so hard?"
Ben allowed the gun to twitch in his grip and pretended to fire at him as he made his way back the way he came, earning him a frightened yell from Unkar Plutt, who cowered as much as his bulky frame would let him. By the time he realized he was okay and that Ben didn't actually shoot him, Ben was long gone.
The junk shop smelled like engine grease, sweat, and old tires as Ben entered a couple of minutes after leaving the apartment where the Plutts lived. There several employees, all of them men, who glanced up at him, but they all left him alone after giving him a considering look. Ben probably looked ready to murder someone. It was certainly how he felt. He would have been proud of his self restraint after hearing Unkar's story, but he was too focused on finding Rey to think about anything else.
"Where's Rey?" Ben barked at the young man closest to him. He was wearing a pair of gray coveralls with the name DJ embroidered on the upper right corner.
The man wordlessly pointed to the back of the junk shop where it looked like the oldest, rattiest cars were stored. Ben didn't bother thanking the man as he strode purposefully in that direction.
He found her underneath the skeleton of a car that he supposed must have run once upon a time. He couldn't make heads or tails of any of it, but Rey was working underneath it so diligently that she didn't hear him say her name at first. At least, that's what he told himself because he didn't think she would outright ignore him. Then again, he'd only known her a day so it wasn't really for him to say what she would or would not do.
The second time he said her name he knew she heard him because she froze what she was doing, then slowly rolled herself out.
Her face was caked in grease. From her forehead down to the base of her neck was smeared in black grease that he was surprised to find didn't repulse him. On the contrary, he suddenly found himself thinking she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
It was Rey who broke the silence first. She sat up from the skateboard she'd been using to roll herself back and forth from the car and muttered, "What do you want?"
"I've come to take you back," he said, then immediately regretted how…inhuman the words must have made her seem. He'd reminded himself once before that she wasn't some stray puppy he could take in and throw out at leisure. She was a human, and an adult at that, who was perfectly capable of making her own decisions.
She seemed to be thinking along those same lines because she said, sounding more annoyed than angry, "Did it ever occur to you that I left for a reason?"
"Honestly, I just sort of assumed you'd been kidnapped."
His attempt to lighten the atmosphere did not go over as well as he'd hoped, but he was encouraged to see the beginnings of a smile dance upon her lips.
"I hate to break it to you, but not everyone wants to be the next Organa-Solo charity case. Some of us need to accept our lot in life and move on."
"Is that what you've been telling yourself all these years? Waiting for parents who you know in your heart won't come back for you?"
This got the reaction he wanted. Her dark eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed in apparent anger. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."
She got to her feet, picked up the skateboard, then began to walk away from him. He grabbed her wrist, stopping her before she could take more than a couple of steps and replied, "I understand Plutt has been using your false hope to keep you coming back to him despite years of torment and abuse. I understand he makes you work for him in return for a place to stay. I understand he and his jackass son make enough money to take care of themselves and you, but they make you go to the homeless shelter for food and keep you dressed in rags and take all the money you should be earning in order to keep you dependent on them. I understand that you should be in college, studying to make a better life for yourself, and that you should be going out and having fun instead of slaving away in this aptly named junk shop. What I don't understand is why."
Rey turned around and yanked her wrist out of his grip. "Of course you don't," she snapped at him, her voice shaking with mounting fury. "You have parents who love you. You don't know what it's like to be abandoned by the people who are supposed to love you and take care of you. You could never imagine how it feels to know your family loved money and drugs more than their kid. Just be thankful you never have to."
"You're right," Ben conceded softly. "I don't know how it feels. I'm sorry that you do. But I want that to end."
She frowned and crossed her arms, but she didn't walk away. Ben took that as a sign to continue.
"All I'm offering is friendship. A place to stay with no strings attached until you can on your feet. As long as it takes. You can get a real job, or you can go to college. You can join the girl scouts for all I care! You deserve to experience the things you've missed out on. Don't ruin this because you're clinging on to the false hope that you know in your heart isn't real."
"What do you mean, 'no strings attached?' You let me live in your apartment without anything in return?" Ben hated the suspicion in her voice, the doubt in her eyes.
"Yes. All you need to do is worry about yourself. It's never too late to start over. Don't look back on this opportunity with regret later on."
"You'll let me leave when I want?"
"Yes."
"If I decide to leave tomorrow, you won't stop me?"
"I promise."
"Even if I stop by the junk shop from time to time just to see?"
"That would be holding on to false hope," Ben began, earning himself a glare from Rey. "But yes."
Rey seemed to think on it for a moment. As Ben looked around he saw that they had gathered a small crowd of employees around them who were watching their conversation with interest. Ben ignored them as he continued to wait for Rey's answer.
"Okay," she said after what felt like an eternity of silent deliberation. "I'll go with you. On one condition."
Ben tried not to look too pleased with himself as he said, "Sure. Anything."
"Our relationship stays strictly platonic. No romance."
A/N: Let's see how well that works...