The cold nod was still far warmer than he might have expected, so he pours two mugs, one for her and one for him and held out one. She looked as tired as he feels, although she wears it a deal better than he did. That might be his age.
He took a drink of caf before he could formulate an answer, hot and black. "Still awake," he admitted blearily. He might have been better off if he'd never laid down to try. There had to be something available that could help, he'd think. He then realized his mind had wandered away from the conversation. "You?"
He didn't think she would answer, it was more a polite inquiry than anything.
"Still awake," she echoed, weariness tinging every word. The nice thing about tiredness was how it seemed to eclipse her ire, she could sit here and drink her caf in the same proximity as him without considering the angle she would have to fling the mug to catch him in the face.
"It's hard to sleep here," Rey added after a sip, watching him through the steam as she held her mug to her face. "There's a lot of noise you don't notice until all the other noise is gone," she was talking too much - she knew it. She knew he did't care what she had to say and she knew ordinarily she would have been happy to not say anything to him. And yet - there in the ambiguously late hours, small talk seemed somehow acceptable.
Shifting in her seat she continued to study him passively, tired and uncertain. "I thought about sleeping outside but your mother tossed that idea out fairly quickly."
He chortles slightly, and takes a drink from his caf. It's a little too hot to take a large drink of it, but he welcomes the burning feeling on his tongue, even if he'll probably regret it later. It seems like a small price to pay for here and now.
"There's stinging insects out there the size of well-fed womp rats, I'd avoid sleeping outside, too." They didn't bother people who were moving, but someone inert and sleeping would have been little more than a waiting buffet.
"I almost find it too quiet," he replied, a little belatedly. It reminded him of being his uncle's student again, the only sounds at night being chirping insects and his own thoughts. The insects were different and the room a bit different than his cell as a student Jedi, but some things were the same. He was used to being on ships, where there was always someone awake and working, the engines always churning and working to keep them airborne. It was a different kind of energy, and one he found it easy to lose himself in.
At the mention of giant insects Rey made a face into her mug and shook her head, silently admitting defeat as far as the matter of sleeping outside went. "Too quiet? Everything outside makes a racket all night long." Her gaze flicked back to his incredulous, wearily amused at the idea that anyone could find the din of the forest quiet.
"You would have hated nights on Jakku if you think this is quiet - well, beyond just being on Jakku." It had been difficult to start surrendering the idea that she would ever go back, and that anyone would be returning for her when she did. It was difficult to admit you didn't know where you fit in the galaxy. She had waited for so long for her family, letting that hope be her governing principle for so long that now she felt untethered and uncertain of how to begin heeding the pull of the Force that had gone from a whisper to a shout inside her within a matter of moments. Touching that lightsaber had knocked the lid off of a box she had unknowingly kept tightly covered, leaving her with a head ful of questions and uncertainty.
Quiet for a long time she cleared her throat, studying him as she spoke. "I didn't think we could be civil," let it never be said Rey wasn't unbearably blunt when it suited her.
"It's... different," he allowed. "I'm used to being on star destroyers."
Yeah. Like she needed that reminder. He drank his caf before he could find something else stupid to say, instead opting to listen. He gives a sound of amused agreement when she clarfies about hating being on Jakku simply for its own sake. She wasn't wrong about that. He would probably find it similar to Yavin in a way -- somewhere you both want to leave and stay in.
It's not that he's listening to her thoughts, so much as she's being very loud about thinking them. He didn't give any indication of that, but insteads regards her when she speaks again. That is probably as good an opening as he'll get. "I've done nothing to indicate it might be possible," he conceded. I'm sorry didn't come out, but what good was an apology from someone like him? Worse than nothing, he supposed. I shouldn't be here crept into his brain like an icy finger.
Now he was being loud with his thoughts, though whether she knew they were his or not he couldn't be sure.
“No, you haven’t,” she paused for a moment, regarding him. It wasn’t that she found his presence especially noisy, but she could feel something, his doubt and his discord, the turmoil that held him together. There were little nudges and whispers and while they evaded any examination with her limited capabilities, they linger long enough to almost become interesting.
“Caf is a good start though,” Rey shrugged a shoulder at him and took another sip from her mug, suddenly uncertain as to why she would be quite so generous with someone like him. Cafe was a good start, sure, but he had tied her to a chair and thus didn’t need to know that, or be invited however inadvertently, to get even a hair closer to her. She had always thought of herself as practical, level-headed about what was worthy and what wasn’t, but - she could feel something in him. The beginnings of a shape, a ghost of something - or someone, who had been, lurking just at the edges of Kylo Ren. It was peculiar and not without its own intrigue.
Caf might have been a good start, but it was quickly beginning to taste like dirt in his mouth. Meditation had never really been a strong point of his, not in his youth and not as an adult, but he tried to blank his mind. Rid yourself of anything that isn't useful to you. Usually the only thing left then was anger. At Luke, his parents, the whole galaxy, and the conviction that he would burn them all.
When his mind is cleared, he finds it's not anger left there -- at least not only anger, seeming small and bruised and a poor imitation of itself. And what else is there? Guilt. He knows guilt well enough. Something else, too, in particular respect to the Scavenger -- Rey -- something he's not prepared to untangle just now. But if he ever wants to, he has to set that foundation now. You can't control how others will react to you, Ben. Only yourself, his mother had told him just the day before -- or maybe the day before that, with as little sleep as he is getting it's difficult to remember.
But if he ever wanted her to regard him with anything but suspicion and anger, he would have to be the first. May as well get used to making apologies and having them thrown aside. "I... am sorry about the interrogation," he said finally. "I did plenty to regret as part of the First Order and it's... for complicated reasons that felt justified at the time." Enumerating them would show her too much of himself, the parts that were always too angry and too uncontrollable and too powerful and just too much for everyone he'd ever loved.
"I don't expect any forgiveness, I just... wanted to apologize," he finished lamely, staring into his half empty mug of caf for lack of anywhere else to look.
Rey’s eyes flick sideways, as he apologizes, looking at nothing but doing it incredulously enough one might expect a cameraman or some innocent bystander bearing witness to this truly inordinate turn of events. Turning to face him again her shoulders sink as she breathes out a harsh little sigh, setting the mug down and folding her hands neatly into her lap. “I never expected that,” squaring her jaw as she turns his words over in her head again and again, she gives him a small nod.
“Thank you, I appreciate it,” was she entirely willing to forgive and forget? Not precisely. You didn’t stay alive in the badlands just trusting people who hurt you all willy-nilly, but it was something - and there was something in the way he spoke that made Rey want to believe he meant it. The tiredness in his voice and written all over his face lending themselves to candor, to something she might actually start to trust if he showed this side of him again.
“I hope that-” Rey trailed off, unsure really what it was she meant to say to him in the first place. “I hope that you find what you need, with this, with your family.” It didn’t sound any less strange out here in the open air than it did in her head but as poorly articulated as it was - her words were no less sincere.
It felt a little anticlimactic, not being shouted at. Not that he's going to complain about it, although there's something that sticks in his gut -- would have almost preferred to be met with anger. It's what what he deserved, at the very least.
But the unexpected hits him differently. He's not going to cry, although he feels like he could. It's not only an apology accepted, but a well wish in return. He doesn't know what to say for a long time, but eventually speaks. "Maybe," he agrees softly. "I didn't find it without them. May as well look at where I started."
Falling quiet she let the silence between them hold for a long moment as she mulled his words over in her mind, her eyes aimlessly flicking towards the rim of her caf mug.
"For all the nav charts," pausing her gaze returned to his face, thoughtful and shrewd as she seemed to pick and choose every word she said. "The galaxy is bigger than you could ever imagine. There's always somewhere to look." This conversation felt weightier than she would have liked it to, but somewhere inside her there was that slight nudge to keep going, like there was some string of words out there she could arrange that might quiet some part of the roar in him and she was compelled to continue to try and find it.
He listens to her, although he doesn't know why. It's just this side of babbling, probably the result of their combined sleep deprivation. If he were feeling surly instead of just exhausted, he might ask her how she knows, stuck on that ball of dust.
But he isn't, and he doesn't. There's still something about her that is making him listen. He doesn't know why her voice is like cool water on a fever, it simply is. None of this made sense. But he's simply too tired to fight... so he simply lets whatever this is be.
"I've seen a lot of it," he says. Sometimes through the filtered vision of his helmet, sometimes with his own eyes. Sometimes at the head of a fleet of stormtroopers, occasionally as a wide-eyed boy who couldn't believe he'd been permitted to accompany his father, his mother's warnings to be careful and behave still in his (overly large, not that it mattered) ears. Some he's seen but never been to, like she island in the vast ocean he saw in her mind. He wanted to ask her about it, but they've only just started to let that be in the past.
He instead sticks to something a little more general, maybe a little... nicer. He'd seen a lot, probing her mind, but most of it had been impressions, discarded as soon as he deemed it not of use to him. "Is this your first time off Jakku?" As if she's gone to Naboo for some sightseeing instead of had her entire life hijacked by the Resistance and First Order's conflict.
Despite the caf the lack of sleep is certainly winning out, making her more candid with him than she had any business being Watching him when he mentions that he's seen his fair share of the galaxy she flinches her chin up, silently repressing the urge to ask how much of that he's cut a bloody swath through. They're both holding their tongues, she can feel it in the air and see it in the pinched corners of his face.
"Yes, I'm certain I wasn't always there but I can't remember anything that came before it," which she knew he knew after the brutal way that he rifled through the contents of her mind - but they were experiencing an unspoken armistice right now and it would do no good to remind him of that. For now everyone was tired, out of place even while in the places they possibly should be - or the closest to that they might reach any time soon.
"Where was the best place you went?" Her trepidation was replaced by curiosity, and the questions she always seemed to have were limitless, this one seemed like the safest one to ask.
Truthfully, he's cut a bloody swath across a good portion of it. But there's also many places he's been as himself, the son of a scoundrel and a galactic politician, as an apprentice to his uncle. And she's asked him a question, and even if she's not actually interested and is just being bizarrely polite she deserves an answer.
It's also something of a nice way to find a good thing in his past. They were there, buried under everything. It was finding them that was the hard part. "Naboo," he answered with a slight smile. Family connection aside, there was everything a person could want there. "Beautiful forest, mountains, lake country, cities, waterfalls hundreds and hundreds of meters tall. It's beautiful there."
The change in his face was as interesting to Rey as his answer. She had asked sincerely, and the shift in his demeanor spoke volumes as to how much he meant what he said. It was strange and painful to consider the person who had come before Kylo Ren, who's choices had dragged him down a path that twisted in ways those who loved him were in agony over. Though, Rey was sure the experience hadn't been painless for him either.
"I think lakes are wonderful, a lot of fish to look at," her assessment is quiet, tired and more candid than she would have been if the caf were doing a better job. "When the war's over I hope to see more of everything."
When the war's over. It seemed like such a foreign concept, especially after a lifetime of one thing after another. He didn't know what that would have looked like a week ago (probably much more of the same, he thought) and what it would look like now was an enormous question mark. Looming.
"Well, stick with the Resistance and I'm sure you'll get there soon." It seemed like the Resistance was everywhere when he was trying to stomp them out, and that didn't seem likely to change soon. Of course, he hadn't had any news of any kind since walking away. That wouldn't last forever, though.
"Stick with the Resistance or return to Jakku - those seem to be what my choices are," Rey had thought long and hard about what shape her future might take now that she was here. It was hard to let go of the wait she had invested her life until this point into, but now, in the face of the galaxy beyond Jakku it was hard to deny that she wasn't meant to return there.
If they had an actual friendship -- one like he hasn't had in years, where their meeting had not been adversarial, galvanized as they punched their way into each other's minds -- he might have more to say. As it is, he doesn't think any input he might come up with would be welcome. Her thinking is still quite loud, but he doesn't tune into it. She wouldn't like that. "You can always take the third path. No one's going to make you do anything you don't want to," he says, a little listlessly.
Frowning Rey hummed thoughtfully at his words, remaining silent for a drawn out, thoughtful moment. "You should try to sleep, you're tired," Rey wasn't certain how it was that she felt it, but she did. She rose from her chair, taking a step towards the entry into the corridor but pausing.
"Or you can come watch the dawn with me," her expression was tight, gritty with hesitation even as she issued the invitation. It seemed nicer than looking beneath the rocks of her thoughts.
Sleep is about the last thing he can stomach right now, but he knows it won't be long before his body needs it, flesh and blood human that he is. Maybe shorter bursts would be better? Less room for nightmares to creep in or his former Master to slither in to his vulnerable mind.
She makes her... offer, invitation, whatever you want to call it, and for a moment he wonders if the aural hallucination stage of sleep deprivation has begun. But she's still there, as though waiting for an answer. "If you really don't mind," he said cautiously, unsure of his own motives for accepting.
Of course, maybe he had hallucinated the question and now would be met with confusion.
To say that she wouldn't mind wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't a lie either - she didn't know. She knew what it felt like to be unsure, Rey had gotten to know uncertainty very well in a very short amount of time since meeting Finn and ending up further away from Jakku than she ever believed she would be able to go without her family having found her. Tilting her head to the door in silent acquiesce Rey turned and headed out of the kitchen, already moving through the corridor and towards the exit, her steps swift and silent.
"All right," he said, more or less entirely to himself. He could have asked why or if she was sure again, but that probably would have risked revoking the invitation altogether. Instead, he finished the last of his caf and set the mug aside, and strode out after her.
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Date: 2020-05-27 09:47 pm (UTC)He took a drink of caf before he could formulate an answer, hot and black. "Still awake," he admitted blearily. He might have been better off if he'd never laid down to try. There had to be something available that could help, he'd think. He then realized his mind had wandered away from the conversation. "You?"
He didn't think she would answer, it was more a polite inquiry than anything.
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Date: 2020-05-29 06:43 pm (UTC)"It's hard to sleep here," Rey added after a sip, watching him through the steam as she held her mug to her face. "There's a lot of noise you don't notice until all the other noise is gone," she was talking too much - she knew it. She knew he did't care what she had to say and she knew ordinarily she would have been happy to not say anything to him. And yet - there in the ambiguously late hours, small talk seemed somehow acceptable.
Shifting in her seat she continued to study him passively, tired and uncertain. "I thought about sleeping outside but your mother tossed that idea out fairly quickly."
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Date: 2020-05-31 06:20 pm (UTC)"There's stinging insects out there the size of well-fed womp rats, I'd avoid sleeping outside, too." They didn't bother people who were moving, but someone inert and sleeping would have been little more than a waiting buffet.
"I almost find it too quiet," he replied, a little belatedly. It reminded him of being his uncle's student again, the only sounds at night being chirping insects and his own thoughts. The insects were different and the room a bit different than his cell as a student Jedi, but some things were the same. He was used to being on ships, where there was always someone awake and working, the engines always churning and working to keep them airborne. It was a different kind of energy, and one he found it easy to lose himself in.
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Date: 2020-06-01 06:54 pm (UTC)"You would have hated nights on Jakku if you think this is quiet - well, beyond just being on Jakku." It had been difficult to start surrendering the idea that she would ever go back, and that anyone would be returning for her when she did. It was difficult to admit you didn't know where you fit in the galaxy. She had waited for so long for her family, letting that hope be her governing principle for so long that now she felt untethered and uncertain of how to begin heeding the pull of the Force that had gone from a whisper to a shout inside her within a matter of moments. Touching that lightsaber had knocked the lid off of a box she had unknowingly kept tightly covered, leaving her with a head ful of questions and uncertainty.
Quiet for a long time she cleared her throat, studying him as she spoke. "I didn't think we could be civil," let it never be said Rey wasn't unbearably blunt when it suited her.
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Date: 2020-06-05 04:53 am (UTC)Yeah. Like she needed that reminder. He drank his caf before he could find something else stupid to say, instead opting to listen. He gives a sound of amused agreement when she clarfies about hating being on Jakku simply for its own sake. She wasn't wrong about that. He would probably find it similar to Yavin in a way -- somewhere you both want to leave and stay in.
It's not that he's listening to her thoughts, so much as she's being very loud about thinking them. He didn't give any indication of that, but insteads regards her when she speaks again. That is probably as good an opening as he'll get. "I've done nothing to indicate it might be possible," he conceded. I'm sorry didn't come out, but what good was an apology from someone like him? Worse than nothing, he supposed. I shouldn't be here crept into his brain like an icy finger.
Now he was being loud with his thoughts, though whether she knew they were his or not he couldn't be sure.
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Date: 2020-06-06 12:40 am (UTC)“Caf is a good start though,” Rey shrugged a shoulder at him and took another sip from her mug, suddenly uncertain as to why she would be quite so generous with someone like him. Cafe was a good start, sure, but he had tied her to a chair and thus didn’t need to know that, or be invited however inadvertently, to get even a hair closer to her. She had always thought of herself as practical, level-headed about what was worthy and what wasn’t, but - she could feel something in him. The beginnings of a shape, a ghost of something - or someone, who had been, lurking just at the edges of Kylo Ren. It was peculiar and not without its own intrigue.
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Date: 2020-06-07 08:06 pm (UTC)When his mind is cleared, he finds it's not anger left there -- at least not only anger, seeming small and bruised and a poor imitation of itself. And what else is there? Guilt. He knows guilt well enough. Something else, too, in particular respect to the Scavenger -- Rey -- something he's not prepared to untangle just now. But if he ever wants to, he has to set that foundation now. You can't control how others will react to you, Ben. Only yourself, his mother had told him just the day before -- or maybe the day before that, with as little sleep as he is getting it's difficult to remember.
But if he ever wanted her to regard him with anything but suspicion and anger, he would have to be the first. May as well get used to making apologies and having them thrown aside. "I... am sorry about the interrogation," he said finally. "I did plenty to regret as part of the First Order and it's... for complicated reasons that felt justified at the time." Enumerating them would show her too much of himself, the parts that were always too angry and too uncontrollable and too powerful and just too much for everyone he'd ever loved.
"I don't expect any forgiveness, I just... wanted to apologize," he finished lamely, staring into his half empty mug of caf for lack of anywhere else to look.
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Date: 2020-06-09 12:51 am (UTC)“Thank you, I appreciate it,” was she entirely willing to forgive and forget? Not precisely. You didn’t stay alive in the badlands just trusting people who hurt you all willy-nilly, but it was something - and there was something in the way he spoke that made Rey want to believe he meant it. The tiredness in his voice and written all over his face lending themselves to candor, to something she might actually start to trust if he showed this side of him again.
“I hope that-” Rey trailed off, unsure really what it was she meant to say to him in the first place. “I hope that you find what you need, with this, with your family.” It didn’t sound any less strange out here in the open air than it did in her head but as poorly articulated as it was - her words were no less sincere.
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Date: 2020-06-12 09:22 pm (UTC)But the unexpected hits him differently. He's not going to cry, although he feels like he could. It's not only an apology accepted, but a well wish in return. He doesn't know what to say for a long time, but eventually speaks. "Maybe," he agrees softly. "I didn't find it without them. May as well look at where I started."
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Date: 2020-06-19 01:37 am (UTC)"For all the nav charts," pausing her gaze returned to his face, thoughtful and shrewd as she seemed to pick and choose every word she said. "The galaxy is bigger than you could ever imagine. There's always somewhere to look." This conversation felt weightier than she would have liked it to, but somewhere inside her there was that slight nudge to keep going, like there was some string of words out there she could arrange that might quiet some part of the roar in him and she was compelled to continue to try and find it.
It was not the most comfortable feeling.
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Date: 2020-07-02 12:31 am (UTC)But he isn't, and he doesn't. There's still something about her that is making him listen. He doesn't know why her voice is like cool water on a fever, it simply is. None of this made sense. But he's simply too tired to fight... so he simply lets whatever this is be.
"I've seen a lot of it," he says. Sometimes through the filtered vision of his helmet, sometimes with his own eyes. Sometimes at the head of a fleet of stormtroopers, occasionally as a wide-eyed boy who couldn't believe he'd been permitted to accompany his father, his mother's warnings to be careful and behave still in his (overly large, not that it mattered) ears. Some he's seen but never been to, like she island in the vast ocean he saw in her mind. He wanted to ask her about it, but they've only just started to let that be in the past.
He instead sticks to something a little more general, maybe a little... nicer. He'd seen a lot, probing her mind, but most of it had been impressions, discarded as soon as he deemed it not of use to him. "Is this your first time off Jakku?" As if she's gone to Naboo for some sightseeing instead of had her entire life hijacked by the Resistance and First Order's conflict.
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Date: 2020-07-09 04:37 am (UTC)"Yes, I'm certain I wasn't always there but I can't remember anything that came before it," which she knew he knew after the brutal way that he rifled through the contents of her mind - but they were experiencing an unspoken armistice right now and it would do no good to remind him of that. For now everyone was tired, out of place even while in the places they possibly should be - or the closest to that they might reach any time soon.
"Where was the best place you went?" Her trepidation was replaced by curiosity, and the questions she always seemed to have were limitless, this one seemed like the safest one to ask.
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Date: 2020-07-19 08:55 pm (UTC)It's also something of a nice way to find a good thing in his past. They were there, buried under everything. It was finding them that was the hard part. "Naboo," he answered with a slight smile. Family connection aside, there was everything a person could want there. "Beautiful forest, mountains, lake country, cities, waterfalls hundreds and hundreds of meters tall. It's beautiful there."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 02:41 am (UTC)"I think lakes are wonderful, a lot of fish to look at," her assessment is quiet, tired and more candid than she would have been if the caf were doing a better job. "When the war's over I hope to see more of everything."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-22 11:44 pm (UTC)"Well, stick with the Resistance and I'm sure you'll get there soon." It seemed like the Resistance was everywhere when he was trying to stomp them out, and that didn't seem likely to change soon. Of course, he hadn't had any news of any kind since walking away. That wouldn't last forever, though.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-03 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 12:22 am (UTC)"Or you can come watch the dawn with me," her expression was tight, gritty with hesitation even as she issued the invitation. It seemed nicer than looking beneath the rocks of her thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 06:26 pm (UTC)She makes her... offer, invitation, whatever you want to call it, and for a moment he wonders if the aural hallucination stage of sleep deprivation has begun. But she's still there, as though waiting for an answer. "If you really don't mind," he said cautiously, unsure of his own motives for accepting.
Of course, maybe he had hallucinated the question and now would be met with confusion.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-27 02:45 am (UTC)