Better Via Worse

Rey and Ren have a civilized conversation.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Rey grits out. She can feel the bruise blooming on her cheek, and takes vicious delight in digging her nails into the soft skin around Kylo’s wrist. Kylo is trying to roll his shoulder and slip out of the arm-bar—at the last second she lets him, uses the momentum to flip him over, sprawling on his face.

“Oh, yes,” Kylo snarls as she scrambles up, skirting out of his reach. He exhales through his teeth as he rises, and Rey bares her teeth in turn. “Although I believe it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. You should move your plants indoors.”

They circle one another carefully. He’s got a long reach, but she knows the weak places on his body now—the tender mess of bowcaster-shaped scar tissue and regenerated organs beneath, ribs with old greenstick fractures that never healed, a trick knee, a vulnerable groin. He’s all weaknesses, all the way through, stitched together badly. Snoke had apparently never learned to care for his things.

She wonders, idly, what he thinks her weaknesses are.

“It’s your turn,” he says, ducking her kick and landing a neat blow to her solar plexus. She wheezes, doubling over; he makes a grab for her hair, but he’s made the mistake of coming too close—she brings her head up, and is satisfied to hear a gutting crunch, and Kylo bark in pain. The impact is still rattling her teeth, but she drops to her knees to avoid his blind grasping, slips away.

He doesn’t swear—he’d lose the game, if he did—but she can hear him snarling wordlessly into the Force. “It’s still your turn,” he spits out, instead.

“Oh, ah—do you think we’ll see the whaladons again?” she asks, blinking away the stars in her vision. He’s glaring at her, though it would be more intimidating without the blood currently slicking his mouth and chin. (It’s been a while since Rey’s broken his nose; the older bruises beneath his eyes had just about faded. It’s a nice big target, she’d said when he asked what the fascination was. And then she’d laughed.)

“Well, it is the whaladon feeding season,” Kylo says, in voice bordering on petulant. “We would expect them this time of year. I find the singing pleasant.”

“I think so too,” Rey replies. She’s waiting for—

He’s waiting for her too, and the moment she lunges for his undefended side he’s twisting around, and Rey’s vision goes white at the corners when he brings his knee up, into the small of her back. She hits the ground skidding, tearing up her forearms when she tries to brace herself against the rock. 

Rey grits her teeth against a string of Huttese—the game, she can’t lose the game—and scrambles to her feet again. If Ren notices she’s got tears pricking her eyes, he doesn’t have enough of a death wish to mention it.

The world narrows to just Ren, standing there, watching her.

He’s better with a lightsaber than she is, when he’s not trying to fight multiple assailants and bleeding out into the snow. He’s not better with the Force, but he’s been using it longer, he has half a dozen tricks that have never crossed her mind just because she hasn’t had time to find them. 

But here, standing on a cliff side with just the strength of their breathing bodies, she is better than him. She knows.

Or else, how does she end up standing over him, her heel on his throat?

“What do you think Luke’s making for dinner?” she grits out. She’d have to put more weight on his throat to really choke him, but his broken nose means he can’t draw a full breath; she can see his chest struggling to rise and fall, like bellows, or some large and terrible creature, dying. She watches his face go red, redder, almost the color of his blood—

He reaches out, palm flat, and slaps the hard-packed earth beside him. She steps away instantly.

“Fish,” he finally says, voice rough and wet. His face is streaked with blood and sweat and dust, and Rey feels nothing, except a sort of detached pity. “We’re on an island, it’s always fish.”

She does not help him up.

“You’re in a bad mood today,” she observes, as they follow the narrow track back up to the highest point of the island. Her forearms ache, and she imagines her back will too, once the bruises set in.

He’s walking ahead of her so she can’t see his face, but Ren scowls with his whole body. “I didn’t sleep well,” he finally says, and Rey catches just the flicker-bright tail of his thoughts, the shape of a shadow, falling—

She sucks in a sharp breath, pulling away. (She’s suddenly, viciously glad she broke his nose, glad for the blood on his chin. Good. She hopes it never washes off.)

His shoulders hunch over further.

“I don’t feel as though you two are really honoring the spirit of our agreement,” Luke says when they reach the crest of the island. He’s glancing between Kylo’s bloodied chin and the bruise Rey can feel purpling at her cheek and looking disappointed, which would be worse if that wasn’t how Luke always looked at them.

Well. Kylo, anyway.

“You said we had to have one civilized conversation with each another every day,” Rey answers cheerfully, squatting down by the fire. “One civilized conversation ‘without insults, death threats, or language inappropriate for a child’s ears.’ You did not specify when or in what context that conversation had to take place.”

Those are Kylo’s words, not hers, but it doesn’t matter. For an hour a day, Rey gets to make Kylo Ren bleed—it was his idea, in the wake of Luke’s agreement. She doesn’t care what words are needed to excuse it.

“I’d warn you about severe brain damage, but honestly I think that bantha’s already out of the barn,” Luke sighs. “All right, clean yourselves up. What did you talk about anyway?”

“The weather,” Kylo supplies, walking past the both of them, and trailing blood.

for the meme: finn & rey + T or V plz :3

An abandoned or empty place

They arrive at the stormtrooper barracks too late. The First Order’s already cleared out ahead of their operation, and all that’s left is the building, empty and echoing as they break the doors down. Finn shoulders his blaster rifle anyway, checking corners and searching the rooms as the progress, Rey watching his back.

It takes him a few rooms to notice how strange the place is. It’s not like any barracks he’s been in before. The lines are familiar, but… wrong, somehow. Distorted. Finn realises, slowly, that he’s seeing them from the wrong angle.

He was smaller when he was here last.

Finn stops cold, and Rey must sense it through the Force or maybe she’s caught a glimpse of the expression on her face, because her hand is on his shoulder, turning him to face her.

“What’s wrong?”

She searches his expression, but doesn’t reach in with the Force to try and get it from him directly. Finn appreciates that. They leave this unspoken, but it means a great deal to them both.

He swallows.

“This isn’t a barracks.” Finn nods to the bunks, too small for adults, and the large screens that make up one entire wall. They’re dead now, but he remembers them flickering with promises and reassurance. If only he can be good. If only he can be strong. 

Rey’s forehead creases with understanding, but he needs to say it, needs to spit the words into the empty air, here in the place where he began.

“This is an indoctrination center.”

May I ask for a BB8 in a sweater with the sleeves flapping behind him? I tried to ask this a few times and each time my internet crashed

I was gonna ask why but I realized I don’t think I wanna know in the end and I’m happy just having this be a thing

Han/Leia, things you didn't say at all

he says, ‘so long, princess.’  but even though he is so inexpressibly rude, so sinewed with arrogance, so careless with everything…she’ll see him again. his face in her face, his back hunching through a low door. she’s never liked standing next to tall men, but she wants to stand next to him. he says, ‘i’ll see you in hell.’  because hoth waits for no man, not even the hapless ones who wander into the storm of an argument.  her face burns, it’s only cold chaos outside the base, only death. not the stagnant weight of fear, like recycled air, between two people with more pride than love can reasonably accommodate.he says, ‘i know.’  and it’s the purest thing they’ve shared, the truest intelligence, in what feels like a hundred years of laser tripwires in their path. so she doesn’t blink for a hundred years, twelve seconds really, while the chamber fills with acrid fumes. twelve seconds is how long it takes for his wings to finally break.he says nothing as he holds her, there’s a promise he intends to keep where too many others have died struggling for breath.  whatever they were, they’re too deeply lined now, twisted rivers finding their joined floodplains on a very old map. the topography has changed, but they meet where they always have, in the same swelling rapids. water flows, though, it’s bound by more than grief, and he only knows how to fly. away.his body says nothing because it never comes back to her.  she’s got a feeling, a lava-hot tracery of force memory from her son’s barbed heart, and it’s enough to keep her alive.  but han will never look at her again, in his way of not saying, look at her like she’d opened a door he hadn’t known was there. like all his life had been holding the course she set, waiting to soar through it and steal some peace.she says, ‘if i find the strength to put up a memorial, it’s going to say goodbye. for once.’