The Way to Tomorrow and other stories by the-reylo-void
The Way to Tomorrow
"I don't know," Rey murmurs. "I think home is still quite a ways off for him."
---
Kylo Ren faces his sentence at the hands of the Resistance: a year of off-world solitary confinement, no communication with the outside world.
But it's never that easy to leave old wounds behind.
Or such deeply-forged bonds.
enemies-to-lovers
Six months ago, the popular space opera Lost Galaxy did the unthinkable: it made the controversial enemy-soldier ship MattKira canon. That would be bad enough on its own, but then anti blogger Rey finds a MattKira fanfiction reblogged onto her dashboard. Her solution? Start hate-reading it and posting a running commentary on just how bad it is.
One problem.
The fic is actually pretty good.
And then the author, KyloRen, sends her a message...
Blades Crossed
Notorious figure skater Kylo Ren has had a rough few years; once a decorated competitor, now it's hard to say what he's losing faster, sponsors or partners. With Nationals just six months out and no qualified partner on the horizon, Kylo finds himself begrudgingly skating with college hockey phenom Rey Kenobi, a scrappy forward coming off injured reserve who doesn't know a lutz from an axel. It's only for six months, but family drama, a twisted coach, and a budding closeness to his new partner ensure that this will be the most eventful competition season of Kylo's career.
Commissioned by ricatotnolungs
Typefaces
Titles and Headings - Adam
Body - Cardo
I almost went with a sans serif typeface for the body, to go with the futuristic, spacey look of the headings, but comfort and legibility won out.
Papers
I got a wood, brass, and metal themed paper pad that has a number of patterns with very shimmery gold foil. This has to be one of my favorite covers--it looks understated from afar, but once you move the book, it glimmers so prettily.
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins,
the rest is still unwritten.
“And I stopped just surviving,” she said, setting her jaw and standing up straighter. “I started living.”
E N E M I E S - T O - L O V E R S - a story of redemption, loss, love, and finding yourself again by @the-reylo-void
Today is the two year anniversary of when I started posting this fic! Happy Birthday, Bri/ @the-reylo-void!
A Smuggler Ben Solo/Dark Side Rey arranged marriage fic for @the-reylo-void. Many thanks to @rapturousaurora for betaing, @cosetteskywalker for the above moodboards, and @aionimica for her drawing of Rey in her wedding dress!
Read it on AO3 here, and listen to the playlist here!
Chapter Twenty Seven: Balance | Chapter Twenty Six: Light to Meet | Chapter Twenty Five: Darkness Rising | Chapter Twenty Four: The Betrayal | Chapter Twenty Three: Stay | Chapter Twenty Two: The Storm | Chapter Twenty One: The Fulcrum | Chapter Twenty: In Darkness | Chapter Nineteen: Rey’s Dream | Chapter Eighteen: Jakku | Chapter Seventeen: The First Flashback | Chapter Sixteen: The Rendezvous | Chapter Fifteen: Tatooine | Chapter Fourteen: The First Mission | Chapter Thirteen: Goodbye to Naboo | Chapter Twelve: The Wedding Night | Chapter Eleven: The Aftermath | Chapter Ten: The Wedding | Chapter Nine: Naboo | Chapter Eight: The Time in Between | Chapter Seven: The Negotiations | Chapter Six: The Duel | Chapter Five: The Discovery | Chapter Four: The Bargain | Chapter Three: The Bounty | Chapter Two: The Meeting | Chapter One: The Treaty
The world in which Ben Solo woke up was bright, but artificially bright, unlike Tatooine’s binary suns causing the sands to shimmer. The unwary could easily believe they saw things in the desert, things living or dead. Whether or not those things were really there, one could not say.
It was also quiet, save for the hums and beeps of machinery. Was he on a ship? He was alive, that was the most important thing, and no one was shooting at him for the moment. His head ached, but not as badly as it had on Tatooine. His body was sluggish and his vision still slightly blurred. He blinked a few times and raised his hands to see that they were, in fact, not bound, and noted the healing bruises on his wrists.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes once more.
“The patient has awakened,” he heard a med droid say. He tried to open his mouth to respond, but the med droid was too quick, and injected him with something. He could feel himself slipping back into unconsciousness as he heard a female voice responding to the droid. His mother? His wife?
This time, he dreamed. He dreamed of a battle, with Rey by his side and at his back, their ‘sabers clashing against weapons in a red-tinged darkness. He dreamed of his mother, finally retired on Naboo, having Gatalentan tea with Aunt Amilyn and the Naberries. He dreamed of his uncle, training a new generation of Jedi. He dreamed of his father and Uncle Lando, laughing in the Falcon with Chewbacca.
He dreamed he was happy.
He could almost believe it, even though he knew it to be a dream. He felt as though he could swim on the tide of happiness, float in the healing waters as they pushed him to shore and into his loved ones’ outstretched arms.
The sun and the waves were soft, caressing him like a mother or a lover, bearing him along to safety.
The Light had always been there, calling him, just as the Dark, but he needed to find it within himself, to embrace it as his own choice, rather than what his family or the galaxy demanded of him.
And so did Rey.
Rey, he thought. He wondered where she was, if she could forgive him for not telling her the extent of his communications with the Resistance.
Rey, his beautiful, stubborn, fierce wife, who so badly wanted a family of her own and vengeance for the one she had lost. She was equal parts light and dark as he was, and she too in time would come to realize the balance required by the Force and forge her own path.
He hoped she would allow him to be there with her, by her side, as she figured it out for herself.
The water upon which he was floating was not water, he belatedly realized in the haze of his dreams and thoughts.
Ben opened his eyes again to find himself submerged in a bacta tank. The tank’s monitor started beeping loudly, and the medical droid hurried over to address it. If the droid were a human being, Ben was certain it would have sighed, for its patient seemed determined to awaken from sedation early.
Ben could feel himself being propelled upward as the tank’s top was removed, and prepared himself for the removal from submersion.
The medical droid helped him out of the tank and guided him to a nearby bed, and only then did he notice the woman sitting in a chair to the left of the bed, glaring at him.
Rey.
Ben situated himself in the bed, and the droid promised to come by with food.
They were alone together, and Ben found he did not know how to begin, but Rey saved him the trouble.
“You took a long time to recover.”
“I’m ten years older than you, remember?”
“That doesn’t make you old. You wasted your Force potential for too long.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied, looking down at his hands. “Where exactly are we, anyway?”
“Your mother’s Resistance base. They weren’t exactly happy about me being here, but I think the look on my face and your condition caused them to keep quiet for the time being, except for that golden protocol droid.”
Ben smiled at the thought of C-3PO’s incessant fretting. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he deadpanned to mimic the droid, looking at Rey, hoping she would at least smile.
She laughed, which turned quickly to another intense frown. “You should have told me about all this.”
“I know,” he repeated. “I am truly sorry, Rey.”
“You should be.” Her lower lip quivered. “I’m sorry too, Ben. I betrayed you, too.”
Ben was certainly not about to quibble with her word choice, not when she offered an apology after presumably saving his life.
“But you saved me. Thank you,” he said, gently reaching out to her in the Force. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t push him away, either.
She shook her head. “The Resistance got there first. I wanted to try to heal you myself, but they wouldn’t hear of it.”
“You know how to Force heal?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. It was said that the healing arts employed by dark side users came at a great price.
She shook her head. “I meant with the supplies the Knights and I have, until we could get you to our hideout. Fionnuala is the best at Force healing, but she wasn’t there with me; only Falisa and Keeva were.”
“You have a hideout?” he asked, his eyebrows raised once again. She sighed. “Of course we do. Hux’s troops and the Knights don’t always get along, and we’re not entitled to command troops or ships.”
He nodded. While he would admit to being curious, the idea of being ensconced with the powerful, malevolent Knights of Ren and who-knew-what-else dark side relics in a location of their choosing would probably make even Luke Skywalker nervous, even if he hadn’t faced down temptation numerous times.
Ben could still feel the nervous, chaotic, pernicious energy that had permeated the atmosphere on Jakku. It was something he was not inclined to repeat.
“Thank you, though. For your apology and for attempting to rescue me. And coming here,” he added. He wondered who among the Resistance dared antagonize Rey.
She shook her head again. “No, Ben. I’m the one who sent the bounty hunters after you.”
In that instant, Ben Solo’s carefully constructed world--and vials of medicine sitting on the nearby table--shattered.
-this is something i’ve been working on for a while! i figured it would be a nice way to welcome the new reylos and also for us seasoned two-years to read some of our favorite works again before the last jedi.
-the list is separated into three categories: one shots, multi-chapter works (1 to 10 chapters) and novel length (anything more than 10 chapters)
-there are also separated lists for alternate universe and star wars universe stories. (a few could go either way, but if it’s based in a galaxy far far away, it goes in the second category.)
-every fic on this list is complete. there are many great works not on this list that deserve recognition, (i’m looking at you, thwarted and satan wears a rolex) but they will appear in later volumes.
-many volumes to come! vol. two is being worked on right now. feel free to send me/share any other completed fics you love or have written and i would love to include them in the coming volumes. happy reading!
[volume one] [volume two]
one shots
alternate universe
-desire is the drug of the bourgeoisie by UndergroundValentine
✿ but it had come to the last roll of the night. all cards on the table, all in. one roll, and everything they’d put forward was gone.
-rare and imprecise by ReyloTrashCompactor
✿ soul bond au. rey and kylo both have a phrase etched along their backs, the future words of their destined soulmates.
-loveliness itself by cazzy
✿ famous actor kylo ren refuses to see any potential in up-and-coming actress rey until they finally act alongside one another, and then she’s brilliant, so brilliant that his entire philosophy on the crippling emotion of love is altered.
-and all my walls came falling down by cazzy
✿ dealing with years of unrequited love is much more difficult when the object of your affections insists on moving in with you.
-this together, any together by shipatfirstsight
✿ when rey wakes up–unable to use the force–in a strange new world, she’s not exactly happy at first to have to share it with kylo ren.
in star wars universe
-your sweet lips (on my lips) by TheJGatsby
✿ rey looses a bet with poe and has to kiss ben solo.
-he’d let her by Lucidlucy
✿ kylo didn’t allow for a lot of things, except when it came to the scavenger. the leeway he afforded her was a mile long. despite his better judgement, he’d let her do just about anything.
-calm as the sea by Lucidlucy
✿ he’s in her head constantly, refusing to back down on his offer to teach her, and unfortunately for rey, kylo ren has never been one to give up until he gets what he wants.
-denial by cazzy
✿ rey is not dating kylo ren. dating a recently “reformed,” patricidal, emotionally unstable former sith man-baby she barely knows would be a terrible idea.
-the one thing you leave behind (is how did you love) by MostTulip
✿ kylo's orders are to turn rey to the dark side. his personal feelings may prevent him from doing so.
multi-chapter
alternate universe (au)
-the girl in terminal b by nightsofreylo (2 chapters long)
✿ ben solo and rey kenobi have the same taste in suitcases.
-nocturnal studies and other peculiar magic by WaterlilyRose (6 chapters long)
✿ the harry potter au from your dreams. truly a beautifully crafted story.
-blades crossed by the-reylo-void (2 chapters long)
✿ rey’s a hockey player. kylo is a professional figure skater who needs a new partner. need i say more?
-charcoal by luvkurai (7 chapters long)
✿ kylo is an artist. rey is a college student that wanders into a gallery one night.
-janus by englishable (3 chapters long)
✿ rey moves into the apartment beside his, with her flowers and her singing and her brisk optimism, and ben solo knows himself just well enough to realize that a person like him really shouldn’t have anything to do with a person like her.
in star wars universe
-release by WillowsWisp (2 chapters long)
✿ kylo ren wants rey to be his apprentice so badly that he visits her each night in her sleep. he promises to search the entire galaxy in order to find her.
-world without end by disaterisms (9 chapters long)
✿ we are one when together. we are one when parted. we will share all. we will raise warriors.
-shatterpoint by disasterisms (5 chapters long)
✿ n. 1. fault; the weak place in an opponent. 2. fracture; where the unbreakable can be broken.
-peace with a smile by shipatfirstsight (2 chapters long)
✿ after seeing ben laugh for the first time, rey's willing to do nearly anything to see it happen again.
-reckless behavior by shipatfirstsight (4 chapters long)
✿ how about a compromise? she suggested, this time assuming a tone of innocence herself. you don’t reveal that I’m here, and I make it worth your while.
novel length
alternate universe (au)
-she who would be queen by sasstasticmad (36 chapters long)
✿ rey is the last daughter of a once noble house, isolated and yearning for a place in the world. when she receives a letter the day after her eighteenth birthday, it seems her station and her husband have been decided for her.
-unexpected by pontmercy44 (27 chapters long)
✿ ben solo gets rey pregnant after a hook up at a bar. so. well. written!
-epithumia by pontmercy44 (20 chapters long)
✿ teacher/student. “can you make an exception?” a lone eyebrow ascended his lofty forehead into his hairline. “try harder, miss kenobi.”
-’til i hear you sing by copper_nails (16 chapters long)
✿ the coruscant opera house is putting on a production of phantom of the opera! rey kenobi has hopes of playing christine, and rumor has it kylo ren has been seen lurking around the opera house again, humming some of the show’s best known songs under his breath…
-ileenium manor by WaterlilyRose (33 chapters long)
✿ rey decided she hated lord benjamin solo before she even met him. so when he comes to take his rightful place as heir to ileenium manor where she works as a maid, it will test rey in ways she couldn’t have imagined.
in star wars universe
-still by Perry_Downing (15 chapters long)
✿ very original and interesting take on a concept that is used heavily in reylo fics – the force bond. what sets it apart is an unconscious rey, a focused plot and believable characters.
-seldom all they seem by ambiguously (24 chapters long)
✿ after a terrible accident, rey wakes up to discover she doesn’t remember the last five years. this is a WILD ride.
-innocents lost by pontmercy44 (22 chapters long)
✿ ben solo meets a girl while doing community service in jakku.
-commemoration by CharlotteCAgain (54 chapters long)
✿ kylo ren surprises rey in order to commemorate a special occasion, and things go from there. attraction has lead to something far more, and that leads to some dangerous, even desperate ideas as they try to find ways to be together.
-disparate pieces by space_trash_princess (27 chapters long)
✿ this wasn’t a handful of portions or canteen of water being dangled before her eyes, but the fate of millions. she had to take it.
A very happy birthday to the lovely @the-reylo-void! Here’s a little gift especially for you, with the moodboard made by me and a drabble below by the one and only, @kylorenvevo! We sincerely hope you enjoy it all, and happy birthday!
The Snow Queen: original tale by Hans Christian Andersen
"They say the devil made a mirror," old Maz told Rey one flickering fireplace night when a chill wind blew in from the Kattegat, "a mirror that distorted all reflections and magnified all flaws so that even the most beautiful landscapes and the best of persons were turned horrid and ghoulish and mean. Anyone who looked into the mirror would see not one good thing left about themselves; it was all corrupted by dark arts. The devil tried to carry the mirror up to heaven, wanting to make fools of the angels and of God, but it slipped from his grasp and fell back to earth, shattering into a hundred million tiny pieces, each one no larger than a grain of sand. These pieces flew about in the wide world. They got into people's eyes and made them see only ugly, hateful things, and they splintered into people's chests and turned their hearts into lumps of ice..."
Rey did not forget this story even as she grew up and most other folktales of her childhood were subjected to the wear and tear of eking out a meager existence. Perhaps it was the kindness Maz had shown her that night, letting her sit by the fire of the pub when it was too late and too cold to walk back to the orphanage, that lingered. In any case, the images remained burned into her memory, a mirror falling from the sky as God and the devil and all the angels looked on, the myriad glittering shards scattered about every which way by many winds.
Ben spoke of winds, too. "The Finland woman is clever," he told Rey one afternoon as they sat side by side and shivered and watched the dark canals ripple in the icy breeze. "She can twist all the winds of the world together into a knot. If the sailor loosens one knot, then he has a good wind; if a second, then it blows stiff; if he undoes the third and fourth, then it rages and upturns the forests."
He was something of a scholar, was the object of Rey's misplaced affections, and he specialized in folktales because he was also a dreamer, which was the worst possible combination for the son of a man who believed only in what he earned by sweat and cunning and a woman who bore the weight of leadership on her shoulders.
"So there is the Finland woman," Rey said, attempting to follow along, "and then there is the Lapland woman, who writes messages to her sister on the scales of fish."
"And then there is the Snow Queen," Ben added wistfully. "They say her eyes are like stars and her skin is made of ice, and that she is very beautiful."
Rey scowled. "But cold to the touch, surely?"
Ben stared at her with his warm brown eyes, the corner of his generous mouth loping into a wry half-smile. "And what," he challenged, "would you know of touch?"
Rey lifted her nose in the air, affecting the haughtiness she'd learned to mimic from more well-off girls. "I know enough." She was painfully aware that she had no right to be jealous, but eighteen was a difficult age, especially when one was in love with the mayor's older, more worldly son, who for the most part still treated her as if she were the ragged little urchin he'd caught picking roses from his mother's garden ten years ago.
Ben's gaze darkened with something that Rey couldn't understand but filled her heart with anticipation and nervousness in equal measure. He reached out as if to touch her cheek, but then another gust of wind blew through the town, rattling shutters and spinning weather-vanes wildly on their poles, and he recoiled as if she'd struck him, drawing back his hand to curl it over his heart in a fist.
"What's wrong?" Rey asked.
"My chest hurts." Ben looked down at the water over which their feet were dangling, and he blinked rapidly. "And I think there's something in my eye."
*
He was cruel to her after that day. He'd never been a particularly kind person, but now it was as if all his bad traits had been amplified. He sneered at her and made her feel ugly and stupid, and his already tense relationship with his parents took a turn for the worse. Elf-touched, the old people soon started whispering, but it wasn't until the town drunk swore up and down and by all the saints that he'd seen Ben Solo whisked away on a white sled in the middle of the night that Rey realized she'd known it all along.
*
She wanted to start looking for him right away, but the roads were impassable this far along into winter, piled high with snowdrifts. "Wait until spring," Maz advised, and so it was a few months later when Rey set out into the thawing world, afraid that she was already too late.
She followed the river, because the drunk had last seen the sled gliding over its frozen surface. It wasn't frozen now but, rather, was a wild and joyous thing roaring in its banks; it took Rey to strange new lands where the flowers talked and the wolves watched her with human eyes, and along the way she asked every living thing she met if they had seen Ben. But the flowers knew only their own old rhymes and spoke only of what they had dreamed during the long winter beneath the soil.
"The woman in her long robe stands upon the funeral pile as the flames rise around her and her dead husband," boomed the tiger lily, "and thinks on the living one in the surrounding circle, the fire of whose eyes pierces her heart more than the heat which soon will burn her body to ashes."
"Two little girls sit on a swing beneath the trees, rocking themselves backwards and forwards," sighed the snowdrop. "Their older brother holds a little cup in one hand and a clay pipe in the other; he is blowing soap bubbles that float in charming, changing colors. A swing, a bursting bubble, such is my song!"
"Three sisters made of glass," tolled the bells of the hyacinth, "dance beside a calm lake in the clear moonshine. They vanish into the wood and then three coffins glide out of the forest and across the lake, glow-worms flying around like little lights. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead?"
All this talk about funerals and coffins caused Rey to worry even more. She eventually found a patch of thorny red roses and asked them, "Do you know where Ben is? Do you think he is dead?"
"Dead he most certainly is not," said the roses. "We have been in the earth where all the dead are, and he was not there."
The relief was overwhelming, but the sight of the roses called to Rey's mind the summer day where Ben found her in his mother's garden, so many long years ago. She sat down and screwed her face up so she wouldn't cry, an act that she'd come to view as a weakness over the course of a hard life.
The ever-watchful wolves wandered near, their muzzles stained with the blood of a fresh kill. "Why are you making that face?" one of them asked. "It is an odder expression than when you humans show your teeth to express joy, odder than when water drips from your eyes in your sorrow."
"I'm looking for someone," Rey answered. "The Snow Queen took him away."
The wolves cocked their heads and flicked their furry tails. "There is spring and summer and autumn and winter, an endless, unchanging cycle that drives the wheels of the world," said the wolf who spoke for the pack. "Birds fly south and we ourselves come down from the mountains and the flowers shed their finery. All realms must bow to the Snow Queen."
"I don't care," Rey growled. "I want him back."
Hunger was the most enduring language that wolves could understand in their bones. They helped her, then, cornering a reindeer in the forest and extolling the trembling beast to carry Rey to the Snow Queen's palace. Rey clung to the reindeer's brown coat as it galloped over the wide plains and through shining valleys, to the glaciers and deep coastal fjords where even spring and summer and autumn dared not tread. Blue and green lights pulsed in the black sky and the reindeer snuffled happily, for all northern creatures dearly love the Aurora Borealis, but its hooves clattered to a stop at the edges of the Snow Queen's garden, and it quailed at the thought of going further.
Taking pity on the poor beast, Rey dismounted. She walked on foot through the bitter cold, fat snowflakes burning her eyes and her lips as she stumbled towards a great portal sculpted from knife-sharp ice.
A knight in a suit of white armor was standing guard, but he took pity on Rey when she explained her purpose. "You're in luck," he said, taking off his helmet to reveal the dark and handsome face beneath. "The Snow Queen has gone to have a look down into the black caldrons," by which he meant Vesuvius and Etna, "and to give them a coating of white, for that is as it ought to be. As for myself, I dream of warmer lands and perhaps it is time I go see them."
"There's a reindeer outside the entrance," Rey told him in payment for his kindness. "You may take it and go where you wish."
"What about you?"
"Ben and I will find our own way back."
The knight thanked her profusely and left his post, and she soldiered on. The walls of the palace were made of driving snow, and the windows and the doors of screaming arctic winds. There were more than a hundred hallways there, lit up by the frosty, jeweled colors of the Aurora, and they were all so large and empty and cold.
She found Ben in a long, echoing chamber, the northern lights casting colored veils over his pale face as he sat by the window. He stood up when he saw her, and he was thinner than she remembered, dressed in severe black robes. But it was still him, after all this time, and Rey all but barreled into him, lifting herself up on her toes to throw her arms around his neck. To her own very great surprise and annoyance, she started crying as she buried her face in his chest.
*
The warmth of Rey's tears melted the lump of ice that was Ben's heart and consumed the splinter of the looking-glass caught within. He wrapped his arms around her, tentatively at first, his gloved fingers running through her hair. Once it registered that this was not a dream, that she was really here, his embrace grew tighter and more fervent, and he bowed his head and wept into her neck. His own tears flushed out the shard of glass in his eye and, when he finally drew back to look upon her face, her cheeks wet with tears and her freckles faded by the winter and her chapped lips nearly blue with cold, she was the most beautiful thing in the world. As she had always been to him, before the devil's mirror, before the Snow Queen.
"I..." Rey hiccuped, kissing the covered palm of his hand as he lovingly cradled her face. "I gave away our ride."
Ben laughed, a sharp and rusty and long-unused sound, and he pressed his lips to her forehead. "I don't mind walking."
"It's a very long walk," Rey said, smiling as her hand found his and their fingers tangled together beneath the northern lights.
He shrugged. "So we'll do some sightseeing along the way. And maybe we can talk a bit, and I'll tell you everything I should have said long ago."
Rey nodded her assent and they left the icy palace hand in hand, warmth unfurling between them every time their eyes met, like a promise of summer.
prompt: “i'm a royal in hiding and you’re a civilian who lives in the same apartment complex as me, hi”
This little ficlet is also for @the-reylo-void, who I think could do with some stupid fluff right about now.
“Kylo…”
“Do we have to use that name?”
“Yes,“ bites out Phasma, straight-backed and hands folded in front of her. She keeps her attention on the door, on all possible exits in and out of the flat, as her job demands she does. Kylo pushes his armchair forwards, to sit by the window, just to make her eye twitch.
Ben gives her a thin-lipped smile. "My mother thinks of everything, Phas."
"Phasma."
"Phas."
"Your mother is a powerful woman, Kylo," she says, brushing her long fingers through short blonde hair. "But not powerful enough."
Ben taps the window, leaning back, taking in the London skyline. Grey buildings, covered in summer. Mikata had warned him not to get used to such weather.
"No 10-inch thick bulletproof glass?"
The reply is wordless; simply Phasma's large hands on the back of his chair and the scrape of its legs, her strength tugging him back to the centre of the tiny flat.
Ben glowers, sinking further into the seat. "I take that as a yes."
A clunk has them both moving; Phasma turning on her heel, covering him, Ben standing.
"Jesus, fucking -- what wanker---" They both hear more swearing, not as creative as his father's, remnants of his life before his entrance into royalty, then, an obnoxiously loud knock on the tiny flat door.
"I'll open it," Ben says to Phasma, pushing past the wall of woman, dedicated so much to her craft that she seems more character than human. "After all, Kylo Ren seems like he'd be the welcoming type."
The obnoxious knock sounds again. Ben sighs, tugging open the door, gesturing for Phasma to step back, at his shoulder as she is.
"Afternoon," he says, barely looking at the figure before him. Training has made him adept at taking in hundreds of faces and forgetting them without thought.
He is suddenly hit in the chest, his satchel thrust into his chest, and he stumbles back, barely holding onto the door handle. All at once, he takes in who is before him.
She is small, much smaller than him, lean, something of the countryside, or isolation at least, about her. It's in the hazel brown eyes, the tangled hair scooped into a messy bun. She wears denim shorts, a loose-fitting white vest and there is sweat on her clavicle bone, and the peek of a pink lace bra from his vantage point.
Small girl, beautiful eyes, and a large temper. Proved as she heaves---small girl, big temper, amazing strength, he adds that to the list---bag after bag into the flat, past the threshold. Phasma's eyes grow wider and bigger at each transgression of painfully laid out boundaries.
The girl with the beautiful eyes and strength turns towards him when she is done. A sheen of sweat on her brow has joined the shine on her clavicle bone. Ben feels uncomfortable in her presence, yet stands there still, dumb and holding his father's satchel in his arms.
"I'll make you a deal: you, keep your shit out of the way of the corridors and me, I won't have to move it for you. Understood?"
"Um..." It's been so long since he has said 'um' that it feels foreign on his tongue. Makes him feel like another person entirely. "P-perfectly."
She goes to leave, but he doesn't want her leaving quite yet. He wants more than simply to remember her.
"What's your name?" he blurts after her. Already at the door, she turns, glaring---but then her expression softens. She bites her bottom lip.
"Rey." Her eyes flit towards Phasma, and she jumps. "Christ! I'm so sorry, I didn't -- I didn't see you there. Are you---?"
She gestures with a finger between them.
"No!" barks Ben, dropping his satchel and hurrying forward, though, for what, he doesn't know. "She's just, um---"
He runs his eyes over Phasma.
"My cousin. A, uh, distant cousin."
"I'm helping him settle in," Phasma lies smoothly, though clearly put out, a soldier of her calibre being reduced to merely the status of 'a cousin'.
"Oh. Then you can tell him how London etiquette works," the girl, Rey, says, glancing towards him without friendliness, but more a pointed glare. Yet such a look doesn't speak of resentment yet to come. More, as it lingers, it speaks of a curiosity.
He is very unfamiliar with these English customs.
"And your name?" she asks.
He flushes as he mumbles the name. Her tilting her head forces him to repeat the ridiculous moniker.
"Kylo?" She poorly hides a snort, unaware she is speaking to the only heir of a principality reaching back beyond the history of this grey island.
A meow makes him jump, and he looks down to find an orange-and-white cat slide through his half-closed flat door. Following the sound, Rey gasps and gathers the cat in her arms.
"Babette!" she gasps, scolding, scratching between the cat's ears and earning a purr for her efforts. She glances to Ben and Phasma as she leaves. "Keep your shit out of the corridor, thanks! Bye!"
