Ben Solo is the son of two high standing people in the government. His mother is an infamous politician and ambassador, and his father is a retired war general. He was a prep school kid but started getting into trouble so his parents gave him an ultimatum: he could either return home and live by their rules, or he could live out on his own but be completely cut off.
Having absolutely no will to live under his parents’ thumbs, he strikes out on his own.
In his absence, they decided to sponsor a foreign exchange student America, young Rey. She’s studying to be a diplomat.
Somewhere along the way, Ben gets into trouble with the law. His father is extremely disappointed in him, and he thinks that Ben should live with the full consequence of his choices. However, his offenses are relatively minor (maybe something substance abuse related) and his mother talks the judge down to house arrest in her home for the summer. Han isn’t thrilled, but he can’t say no to Leia when she gets like this.
When Ben returns home, he’s surprised to find another human being his age living at their family estate, let alone a girl
It becomes clear very quickly that in a way, Ben has been replaced. Rey is the respectable, natural, political protege that they missed out on with Ben. Everything comes easily to her, but Ben quickly finds she has a dark side too.
Before Ben’s return home, Han had created quite the negative image of Ben to Rey. Leia still loves her son unconditionally, knowing that he’s more lost than anything else, but Han often portrays disgust at where Ben’s path has taken him. Rey knows this, and there’s a part of her that wants to capitalize on it.
Rey grew up at the bottom of the barrel. The people that sired her were her parents in biology only. She was an accident baby, and they sold her for drug money the first chance they got. She was raised in an orphanage until their funding was so low that they cold only afford to continue raising children under 8. Rey lived on the streets after that. She had to claw and fight her way for everything she had. She hated it. She didn’t want anyone else to have to know that, to have their childhood stripped from them like her; but to be able to change that, she had to get to the top first.
And now that she was in the lap of luxury, with two revered political figures for surrogate parents, nothing, not even their biological, screw up son, was going to stop her.
They were nothing but antagonistic to each other at first. Ben resented her for having the unwavering adoration and support of his parents, and she was disgusted by him because of his apparent willingness to just throw away all the opportunity he’d been given merely as a birthright.
She routinely threw it in his face that all she had to do was ask his parents for something and they would give it to her. If she needed a car to drive her to various locations; they sent for one. If she wanted a luxury apartment in the upperclass part of town, they would’ve given her one.
“I can take anything I want,” Rey frequently reminded him.
Ben tried to ignore her on the occasions when he was forced to interact with her. He tried to remind himself that she was just a student his parents were sponsoring temporarily; she would go away eventually.
But then she didn’t. A month before she’s due to leave, Han and Leia decide to help Rey get permanent citizenship. They don’t adopt her, but they might as well have.
After this, Ben is no longer passive around Rey. Tense, passionate fights start breaking out whenever the two of them interact. Over time, more and more things are said by each of them. They each begin to delve a little deeper into the other’s psyche the more they fight.
Rey accuses Ben of scorning his parents’ love and squandering their gifts on trivial things while Ben insists that all she has to do is ‘wait until she slips up,’ and then her opinion will change. He’s often confused why she would care so much about how he gets along with his parents, and she doesn’t understand how two people that have shown her nothing but understanding and acceptance could’ve made such a negative impact on anyone that wasn’t their enemy.
Over time, their fights become more and more civil. They turn into discussions, not arguments, and, where before there seethed resentment, ignorance, and hatred, understanding, compassion, and friendship begin to blossom.
Ben finds out about Rey’s tragic upbringing, realizing she never had ANYONE she could count on or rely on for support. Rey learns that what Han painted to be poor choices and signs that Ben was just ‘a bad egg,’ were actually signs of depression that had led to his substance abuse. Instead of being met with a helping hand, Ben’s ‘irregularities,’ as Han colorfully referred to them as, had been dismissed with: “Just get over it,” “Suck it up, and be a man,” and Ben’s personal ‘favorite,’ “Oh stop being such a sissy.”
Not sure where it goes from there. More practiced fit writers: I leave this up to you. That’s all I got right now.
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