#savingwhatwelove

[bitter-sweet-farmgirl]

It’s officially been one year since I watched TROS and it still breaks my heart to think of what could have been....  #SAVEBENSOLO #SavingWhatWeLove #Reylo

[stellardarlings]

#SavingWhatWeLove Day 4

We Have Everything We Need – Celebrate the characters introduced in The Last Jedi. 

Rey really needs to get better about checking whether a space is empty before she barges into it. She has the ability to do that even without opening a door and yet, more often than not, she forgets, still unused to there being people everywhere.

It’s why she’s now trapped in a room with the silently crying form of Rose Tico, who startles at Rey’s intrusion and frantically wipes her eyes, pretending she hadn’t shut herself up in an engine room on the base to bawl her eyes out in private.

Rey would gracefully back out of the room and pretend they hadn’t seen each other, if Rose wasn’t already giving her a cheery, if watery, smile and a wave.

“Hey,” she greets Rey, sniffing and rubbing at her cheeks. “I was just—“

“I’ll go,” Rey assures her. “I only wanted a little—“

“Time alone?”

“Yeah.”

Rey likes Rose. She really does. She’s an endless source of optimism at a time when they really need it. And it’s a very focused, specific type of optimism which doesn’t allow for pessimism from anybody looking to squelch it. More than one officer has quailed under Rose’s glare when they’ve tried to proclaim a particular tactic or task is hopeless, and Rose has told them nothing is hopeless. Plus, she’s an excellent mechanic, always happy to listen to Rey’s ideas and find ways to make them actually work. She’s a good friend. Finn looks at her like she put the stars in R’iia’s eyes.

But Rey’s no good with crying. Rey doesn’t cry, hasn’t since childhood except for a few misguided moments on Ahch-To. She’d even resisted letting them fall when Han Solo plunged from the bridge on Starkiller Base, even though they’d stung her eyes. Rose is not what she needs right now.

And yet Rose’s forced smile has softened, its edges bearing her natural warmth. It’s genuine, even if it didn’t start that way. She shakes her head, her shiny hair shaking with the movement. “No. Stay. I’d like you to.”

Rey stays frozen in the doorway instead of approaching the crate Rose is perched upon. She has no idea what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts.

Rose’s eyebrows lift, disappearing behind her glossy fringe. “What for?”

“Whatever you’re crying about. Aren’t you supposed to say that to people who are sad?” She’s heard that from somebody. Maybe Poe? He’s always telling her that her manners are awful.

For whatever reason, this makes Rose giggle. “I mean, you can. But if you aren’t the person that made them sad, you don’t have to.”

“Oh.” Rey wraps her arms around herself, suddenly chilled in the drafty room. “Did somebody make you sad?” She could go yell at them if they did. That’s a way of being a good friend to Rose—at least, in a way Rey’s capable of.

“Kind of?” Rose looks down at her lap, then slips her hand below the neckline of her jacket. She’s clutching at something Rey can’t see. “I miss my sister, that’s all. Something reminded me of her and I had to get away from everyone for a little while.”

Finn told Rey what happened to Rose’s sister. It wasn’t so long ago, really, but the Resistance has barely stopped running since escaping from Crait. Poor Rose must not have had much time to herself to miss Paige.

“She was all I had left,” Rose continues. “But she gave herself up to make sure we’ll win, so I feel guilty for feeling sad at all. I shouldn’t focus on how I feel—I should be doing whatever I can to help us win.”

“I don’t have anyone left either,” Rey finds herself saying, and then it all comes spilling out, like she’s a freshly uncorked bottle. “I thought I did—for years—but I found out recently that was a lie. A lie I’d been telling to myself. My family are gone, and I don’t miss them at all, not really. I feel guilty about that too.”

It’s not the only thing she feels guilty about. She misses somebody in particular, but it’s not her family. She’s not even sure it’s somebody who ever truly existed outside of her imagination, not even when he’d been kneeling in the abandoned hanger on Crait, staring up at her with dark, sorrowful eyes. If he’d existed, the Resistance wouldn’t be hunted across the Unknown Regions right now.

Rose exhales. “You shouldn’t. Feel guilty. Not if they abandoned you.”

“Then you shouldn’t feel guilty about missing your sister,” Rey says softly. “And we’re not the only ones without any family. Finn doesn’t know what happened to his, Poe’s are gone, Leia…” She cuts herself off. Leia has family left, even if not many people really know the connection between the General and the newly minted Supreme Leader.

“I guess we’ll just have to be there for each other,” Rose decides. 

Rey finds herself smiling. “I guess we will.”

[stellardarlings]

#SavingWhatWeLove Day 3

On December 1st 2017, I was told somebody very dear to me was dying and only had a matter of months to live. It was, not to downplay events, an inauspicious start to the month. I was a wreck, and signed off work with stress.

It meant I had a lot of time on my hands, and that was time I didn’t want to spend with my thoughts or emotions. As luck would have it, The Last Jedi was due to be released halfway through the month.

Mutuals in other fandoms had intrigued me when The Force Awakens came out. I never saw Star Wars as a child - I’m not sure why as my parents both loved sci-fi and various iterations of Star Trek were usually on the TV. For some reason Star Wars never seemed to be one of those movies cluttering up the holiday schedule, so my exposure to it was cultural osmosis only.

But fandom mutuals started hyping up TFA and the dynamic between two characters in particular, so I took myself off to see it right at the end of its theatrical run in 2016. I enjoyed it, I liked the Reylo dynamic, then came home and idly read some of those early fics which predicted the force bond between them.

Jump forward to that terrible month of December 2017, and off I went to the cinema again hoping for a solid distraction from reality. And bless Rian Johnson, he delivered it. For two and a half hours, nothing existed except a galaxy far, far away. I came out with my heart aching in a new way, and I went back to see it again the next day, plus another handful of viewings.

TLJ provided me with a new world to dive into  when the real one wasn’t something I wanted to spend much time in. Unfortunately, the backlash against Reylo in fandom was too toxic at the time for me to do anything more than lurk - I just didn’t have the mental strength to deal with that level of hatred on top of anything else. I had to wait for the loss of my loved one to happen and then begin to heal, and the travesty of TRoS, before I was ready to wade into writing for the pairing.

So I’ll say thank you to Rian Johnson, for those precious hours where he rescued me from the talons of reality and set me down somewhere with hope. And to the fandom writers and artists who gave me even more precious hours in that place of hope.

[stellardarlings]

Day Three: Hands Are A Language

It’s not much of a touch. Fingertips to fingertips. Her callouses against the shocking softness of his skin.

Rey has been touched before, and she’s touched other people. Often in anger, rarely as gently, as tentatively as this. It’s a shock for that reason alone, despite the fact they are barely connecting at all. She can feel the tiny ridges in his skin, the tremor in his arm.

She can feel Kylo. All of him, like a veil has been ripped aside in her mind, and she’s able to step through. To become him.

He’s one enormous bruise, inside. Or perhaps a cloud of bruises: hurt upon hurt upon hurt, every rejection mingling together until they’ve formed a scab over his tenderest emotions. The scab is his anger, that trembling rage which bubbles at the surface. The scab is Kylo, and below that, Ben shelters from everything he’s ever suffered.

He doesn’t want her to see any of that, of course. He tries to drape it in a fresh veil, even as she knows he’s seeing her own array of hurt from his side of it. It’s shockingly intimate, to let somebody inside you like this, and the only way to protect themselves from the worst of the vulnerability is to turn their attentions elsewhere. From the past to the future.

She’s aware, distantly, of their fingers sliding against each other. They’re drawing closer, her fingertips brushing against the inside of his second knuckles. His fingers are so much longer than hers; he’s almost touching her palm.

As the connection solidifies, Rey feels the path she’s looking for—the one which leads towards tomorrow, a ribbon of light in the darkness—and grabs hold of it. Kylo joins her and tomorrow opens up in front of them.

It’s not what she expected. But it is something she very desperately wants. Beside her, entwined with her, she can feel Ben’s bright shock. His yearning. The firmer press of his flesh to hers, as if their bodily connection will make this future more certain.

And it is Ben she feels, not Kylo, the man lured out from beneath his shield of fury. Ben still has the capacity for hope, and it swells alongside her own.

He wants this. She wants this. Everything is pure, and light, and wonderful, for one shining moment.

But something is coming. Something which rips Ben’s hand from hers, and leaves her blinking in the lonely firelight of the hut on Ahch-To. His touch a mere echo, an imprint on her fingers. And in her shock, she takes his mantle of anger, and she rises to face his uncle.

[stellardarlings]

Day Two: Playing A Role

What is hidden behind the mask?

Somebody is crying.

It’s the first thing Kylo notices. He’s disoriented, stumbling through the gray fog he’s just landed in. He was somewhere else a moment ago, and he wasn’t expecting to be here. Wherever here is. The fingers on his right hand tingle faintly, like he was touching something warm, but now they’re bare and exposed to the air. 

The crying solidifies, ringing around him. A child. He turns, searching, and then he sees her. Tiny, ragged, with her hair drawn into three buns at the back of her head. A peal of shock goes through him as he recognizes her.

“Rey,” he calls.

She doesn’t hear him; she’s weeping too loudly. She’s curled up and now he can see that she’s lying in sand—his feet are sinking into the sand too. They’re on Jakku; they must be, it’s where she’s from. Somehow, Kylo has sunk himself into Rey’s memories, and only the tingle on his hand gives him any hint as to how he’s doing this. It’s not like when she was locked up in the interrogation chair—this time, she’s let him into her mind. But how? Why?

 He tries trudging towards her, and the gray mist lifts, letting the hot yellows of the desert leach into the scene around them.

Another voice emerges from the fog.

“Where you, ungrateful little chit?” a man yells, and Rey reacts to his voice, flinching away even though Kylo can’t yet see him. “I paid good money for you!”

Kylo doesn’t know who the man is, but he finds himself reaching for his saber anyway. Who does he think he is, this unseen brute, to say such things to Rey? And where this unexpected tenderness comes from, he doesn’t know. But his saber isn’t in his hand—it hasn’t followed him into this space.

Now, Rey notices him, scrambling to her knees and letting out a little shriek of surprise. Then, as if she wasn’t sobbing moments ago, she summons all her courage, screwing her tiny face up to yell at him.

“Who are you? Go away!”

Now this is more like the Rey he knows and lo—the Rey he knows. And at that thought, he feels a weight at his fingertips. Like they are pressed against something; against somebody. He recalls how he came here, and he understands too. He knows more than he thinks Rey herself even remembers or will admit to herself.

He backs away from her, hands raised to show that he means no harm. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” he tells her.

She blinks at him in surprise, but doesn’t soften her mask of fury at all.

He has to go. Something else is calling him—the weight at the end of his fingers. The warmth of a fully grown Rey, and the promise of the future. But he can’t turn his back on this Rey, the small one who’s just been abandoned by those she ought to have been able to trust the most. So before he steps away, he makes her a promise. One he knows he’ll be able to make good on, one day. Something for her to cling to through the lonely years ahead of her.

“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart.”

[lupeluny]

#SavingWhatWeLove  I believe that in that cave Rey saw Ben in the mirror. They are two that are one, that is why the two figures become one wiht Rey´s face. Because They are a dyad in the force. ^^

[stellardarlings]

Day One: Intense Loneliness

(This is also me, finally, filling a drabble prompt from @pairx2 who said:  Would love to have you write Reys thoughts in the hours/days/months after TLJ and their fight in the throne room. How did she process “Join me”? How did she feel?)

Rey has spent her entire life alone, moving unwanted and untouched through the sands of Jakku, like a shadow shifting under the hot sun. She’s used to it—company is strange to her, an adjustment. So to go from that isolation to being crammed into the Falcon with the remnants of the Resistance has been bewildering and intense. 

Too many people for too much of the time, and while they treat her kindly, she knows she’s too rough around the edges for them. They try to be polite, but sometimes she’ll catch something they try to hide from her, like a glimpse of their aghast expressions as she wolfs down her rations and licks the bowl clean. Sometimes they share glances they think she can’t see, alarmed at the way she behaves. Or they stand a polite distance away in conversation, their smiles absolutely rigid and fake, until Finn guides her towards the sonic to clean herself. They steal her dirty clothes after she’s worn them for three days straight, and then leave her clean, laundered garments to dress in. Subtly trying to soften her and teach her how to be around people, instead of acting like a feral desert child.

Finn and Rose and Poe are nice enough, but Finn’s attention has been stolen by Rose. It’s lovely to watch them bloom together, the spark between them unfurling into something deeper, but it’s also like Rey’s got some salt from Crait stuck in an open wound. And Poe—Poe is as abrasive as salt in his own way. They clash, often, even though she can’t say he’s a bad person. It’s more like their edges are jagged in all the wrongs ways and they’ll never fit together. Meanwhile Leia is warm but distant, too busy to devote much attention to Rey, and Chewie isn’t one for conversation.

So Rey finds herself surrounded by people, and though they all appear to like her, she’s never felt more disconnected. Not even during those nights of eating alone inside her AT-AT home, with only her hope to keep her company.

They don’t know her, these people, and they don’t really want to know her. When she saved them all on Crait, Rey made herself a hero in their minds. She’s Luke’s successor in ways she’s sure he would hate as much as he hated being seen as a hero himself. Is this why he exiled himself to Ahch-To, in the end? When he couldn’t live up to being a living myth to the people around him?

Rey had liked Ahch-To. Not just because of all the water, even if it was salty, even if it was cold. It had felt peaceful in a way that the isolation of the desert never did. Maybe she spent too many years on her own and it broke something inside her, the part of her that knows how to be around others. Or perhaps she was always too broken, and that’s why her parents left her behind. Maybe she simply isn’t made to be with people.

But the thought of Ahch-To reminds her of what else had happened there, and she rubs at her chest, the skin above her heart, like it’s aching. Perhaps it is. The bond has gone quiet in the past few days—she’s cut it off, silencing it. She can’t afford for him to appear to her in the middle of the Falcon, where she never has a moment’s true peace except for when she’s in the sonic. She’s not even during the night, since she’s sharing a bunk with Rose. It was a practical choice to cut Kylo off, but more than that…she’s not ready to face him.

She hasn’t seen him since the throne room, when she’d left him, unconscious among the wreckage. She’d roused at the base of the throne and summoned the pieces of the broken saber to her, thankful that his dark hair covered his face as she passed him by. She didn’t need to see his face again, not if it would give her pause, if it would halt her swift exit from the star destroyer. She didn’t even see him on the battlefield in Crait, had only heard about it afterwards, and then had a brief glimpse of him on his knees in the hangar, staring up at her with a broken gaze. So the last true moment she had with him, he was holding his hand out to her. Offering her everything.

And asking everything of her.

Rey is sure she made the right choice. Kylo may be Supreme Leader now, and the Resistance may be a fragment of what it once was, but joining him was never an option. Not for the throne. She thought she’d seen—well, it doesn’t matter now. She thought she’d seen a different future between them. A brighter one. The connection between them blossoming into a simple life together, untouched by war or the intrusions of other people and their expectations.

She should have known it was nothing more than a trick. A hope. Not meant for her. One way or another, she will walk alone, her burdens uniquely her own.

She doesn’t want power. She doesn’t want to be a myth walking among people. All she wants, all she’s ever wanted, is someone to care for her, and for a few wonderful moments, she thought she’d found that. Maybe Kylo does care for her, but it hadn’t been enough. She’s not enough—he craves more than something as simple as a person to share his life with.

Will this ache ever go away? Will she open the bond back up to him, to find he doesn’t fit with her anymore, any better than Poe Dameron does? Or will she discover that they remain the perfect fit for each other—in all the ways which mean they can never be together?

She doesn’t know, and she’s too afraid to find out.

[stellardarlings]

Taking part in this as much as I can this week, so stay tuned!