Spoils to the Victor
Day Seven of Reylo Monster Week (@reylomonsters) is free choice, and I choose Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley.
Content warning for descriptions of violence and major character death.
Tagging @kylo-of-sorrows, who asked for Kylo to have his beauty and grace taken from him, and this story may just do that trick.
Thanks to @lovethemfiercely, who is my beta for all my Reylo Monster Week stories.
Also on AO3
My entire life has been one long wait.
I waited on Jakku for my parents to come back to me.
Growing up, I would lie in my hammock and think of my parents, then I would sleep and dream of my friend.
There was a very brief moment when I finally got something, not exactly what I’d been waiting for, but something of my own. But now I'm waiting again, waiting for Ben to return. He left an hour ago, climbing the pathways up the narrow cliff edges to the temple where his uncle hides, mourning him, perhaps waiting for him. The darkness is complete, the moon has set and clouds obscure the stars, so he carried his lightsaber, red as blood, to light the way. And I sit here, in the doorway of the Millennium Falcon, waiting to see his light, to take him, finally, home.
Or not.
He was always there, from my very earliest memories. He soothed me as a baby, as a young child and, when my parents left me, he was always… just there. In my head, a steady presence, like the drone of the distant ships at the Niima Outpost. At night, in sleep, he would visit me and we would talk. I would tell him about my endless days, my hunger, my anger, and he would listen. He told me he would come find me, someday, that we could be together. I held onto that promise like a warm blanket when the desert nights get cold.
He was my only constant. Until that evening six years ago.
I still felt like a child, but my breasts were budding and sore and the matrons at the Outpost would say things like she’s starting to become a woman when they thought I couldn't hear. It was evening, and I was having a meal after a long, hard day out on the scavenger field. He was there, as always, the familiar buzz in the back of my head that told me he was asleep, and then the buzz was a scream that throbbed in my head, and then very suddenly it was quiet. Deathly quiet. I was on the floor, my meager uneaten food scattered around me, and I was utterly alone for the first time in my life.
I couldn’t function without him. I was empty. I somehow managed to get myself into my hammock, and I stayed there for a week; not eating, barely sleeping, just existing in my lonely emptiness.
But then, he was back. The buzz returned, as though with a spark, like touching a live wire in the wreckage in a starship. He was different, though, as was the connection. While it had been continuous and certain, it was now intermittent, unstable, no longer a constant; sometimes, for days at a time, I couldn’t feel him at all. Those days were torture but I learned to deal with it, with the emptiness. Ben was different, too, after that. We still spoke, and he sounded like himself, more or less, but he felt backwards, maybe, or inside out. As though he’d been cut into pieces and put together wrong.
Which is exactly what had happened. He finally explained it to me, just three weeks ago (has it only been three weeks?), after the first time we made love under the orange moon on Kashyyyk. I was despondent after Finn’s death, and Ben consoled me. Then he did more, and we felt good, both of us, felt really good for the first time in our lives.
I’m getting ahead of myself. What Ben told me is that, that evening six years before, his uncle, his Master, Luke Skywalker, had come to him while he slept. His uncle feared Ben’s darkness, his strength in the Force, and instead of talking to him, counseling him, the man murdered him. Using his lightsaber he cut Ben into pieces: head, torso, arms, legs. Then he gathered them together, dumped them in an unmanned pod, and set them adrift in space, in an attempt to hide his crime.
Ben was found by one who had been with him from childhood, much as he had been with me. But instead of offering friendship, partnership, love, this one wanted to use Ben’s power to further his own. And to do this, he needed Ben alive. So he took Ben’s body, his dismembered body, and spliced him back together using the same technology that the Emperor had used on Darth Vader decades earlier. He then returned Ben to life using the most corrupted Dark Side of the Force.
Ben wasn’t the same after his week away, but he wouldn’t explain why, and I didn’t understand; I swear I didn’t know. If I’d have known, would I have made different choices? Could things have ended in any other way? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.
Four weeks ago, after days of silence, he told me it was time. He’d finally broken free from his Master, he said, and we could be together. I was ecstatic, of course; I’d been waiting for so very long. He offered to come to me on Jakku but I had already left; I told him to come to me on D'Qar and couldn't understand his hesitance. We agreed instead to meet on Kashyyyk, on the western edge of the Black Forest, which he said he knew from childhood. He said we could escape into the forest and live there, and then after we could go wherever we wished. We could be together.
I was already with the Resistance by then. As I mentioned, I’d already left Jakku with Finn and BB-8. I'd met Han Solo and General Leia, heard of the plan to find Luke Skywalker, the great savior of the Resistance, and watched from the Resistance headquarters on D’Qar as they destroyed the Starkiller. I had also barely escaped being captured by Kylo Ren on Takodana, a terrifying experience, and Finn told me later how that same man, that monster, had murdered Han Solo in cold blood. I swore that I hated him, he who would cause so much fear and pain. The morning after that last dream with Ben we received word that the Supreme Leader was dead, that Kylo Ren was missing, and that a struggle for power had commenced between General Hux and some of the old guard who came to the First Order from the Empire. This was good news; it would buy the Resistance time. Perhaps the First Order would even destroy itself.
I took the Falcon. I planned to go alone, but Finn found me at the last minute and insisted on coming along. I assured him that I would be safe, that Ben would take care of me; I’d known him my entire life, after all. But Finn… oh, my dear Finn. I had no idea, I swear I had no idea.
We landed on Kashyyyk as the sun was setting and the orange moon was rising. There were no other ships visible, but as we opened the door, lowering the gangway, someone stepped out of the treeline. Both Finn and I recognized him immediately, wrapped in black, the silver mask covering his face fixed in both of our brains. It was Kylo Ren. But I could feel him, and he was my Ben. And that was when I knew, and it all made sense.
I tried to tell Finn, but he was sure it was a trap, and he wanted to protect me, and he just wouldn’t listen. He ran down the gangway with blaster in hand, but Kylo pulled away the blaster, pulled out his saber and cut Finn down within a few seconds.
Finn was gone by the time I reached him.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. The realization that Ben, my sweet Ben, was Kylo Ren, monster, murderer… But he listens to me, he came for me, he would never leave me. He’d also killed my best friend in cold blood, right in front of me. It was more than I could take. He had to carry me into the forest, to a small cabin in the treetops, where he tucked me into a warm little bed and fed me with hot soup made with the meat of the arrawtha-dyr.
He kept me there for three days, and for three days he refused to remove his mask in my presence. We talked, and I cried, and we felt each other through the bond and held each other close, and I forgave him.
At the end of the third day he unmasked himself for me. He told me not to be afraid, and I wasn’t. His gloves came off first, revealing large hands, yellow with blackened fingernails. Their backs were criss-crossed with small white scars, but they were beautiful. Next his mask, his helmet. His hair was black, lustrous and flowing; his teeth shone a pearly whiteness; but oh, his eyes, which must once have been lovely, were watery, and seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set. His complexion was grey and shriveled, and his lips, rather than being pink and full, were straight and black. I kissed those lips, and they kissed me back, and it was good because it was Ben and Ben was alive .
There was a scar rent across his face, and as he removed the rest of his clothing I could see that the scar continued down across his chest, meeting with a number of other scars. The scars marred yellow skin that scarcely covered the muscles and arteries beneath. Some of the scars were recent, including one that must have been from Chewie’s bowcaster. But there were others, the murderous cuts that had bisected his body; across his neck, from his left shoulder down to his right hip, another straight across his hips, both wrists, the tops of both thighs. His uncle had not gone easy on him, and my stomach churned to think of it.
But he was there, and he was alive . So I kissed his scars, all of them. His uncle had managed not to cut him between his legs, a small blessing but appreciated, so eventually I kissed him there too, I took him in my mouth and made him feel good, and then he did the same for me, and then I took him into my body and it felt like yes, this is right, this is how we are meant to be.
We spent over three weeks in that cabin in the treetops, making love and talking and exploring each other’s minds. And then, two days ago, Ben said it was time. He wanted to face Luke, to make him pay for what he’d done. I’d seen the map, the complete map showing where he was hiding, and Ben could see it in my head.
We set the course for this planet, which the old Jedi called Ahch-To , and we landed earlier this evening. And now I wait.
Ben shut me out, before he started the long hike up the mountain; he said he wanted to protect me in case he is killed again. He doesn’t want me to feel it. But I can’t feel him, now, it makes me powerless and I hate it. I don’t like not knowing what’s happening, up there in the temple, and I won’t know until he comes back down, or Luke comes down, or, perhaps, both of them together, or neither of them. Perhaps I’ll spend the rest of my life sitting here in the doorway, in the dark, waiting for my life to finally arrive.