Monthly Catch-all

[warfares]

WHO: Kylo Ren and you!
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: July 1st – July 10th
WHAT: Taking advantage of his newfound freedom, Kylo Ren decides to poke at some tentacle monsters and drink hot chocolate. More or less in that order.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Disturbing content, primarily: blood, gore, tentacles and the amputation thereof. Violence may come up, depending. Will add warnings as needed.

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( 0 0 1 ) » SAFE-HOUSE

[ It's late – or perhaps it's early, when Kylo Ren slips from his cot and pulls on first his borrowed clothing and then his boots.

He heads directly for the hatch.

Climbing the ladder takes far longer than he'd like; before New Amsterdam, bruised ribs would be a fleeting inconvenience. Fuel to drive him forward, if necessary; easily healed, if not. He had followed Clarke's instructions as best he could but shied from doing more than that.

Above, there's a pack stashed and waiting. He collects it quickly, checking its over its contents and before pulling it onto his shoulder. He has a rough idea of where he's headed. With any luck he won't be gone for a few hours. Hardly long enough to miss. ]


( 0 0 2 ) » SAMPLE GATHERING ( cw: eventual blood, gore )

[ He finds what he's looking for several blocks away: two crab carcasses – the smallest little more than a bloodied pulp, scattered across an alleyway. Even the most desperate scavengers seem to have given them a wide berth. 

Good. 

He sets down his pack and pulls on a pair of surgical gloves. There's a more than good chance that he'd waited too long, that there's no venom left to risk, but he's not taking any chances. Even without the venom there'll be something to salvage, to use, to trade.  And while buying goodwill is still a largely foreign concept he is willing to learn, if necessary. To play along for the moment as long as it gets him answers. ]


( 0 0 3 ) » SKY PARK

[ Later that week, the city begins its mourning in earnest.

Ren slips through the crowds like a scalefish, hood raised and eyes keen. He buys a hot chocolate from one of the many street vendors – lured in by the promise of something not containing insects for a change – and sips at it intermittently as he wanders.

Eventually, he finds himself in one of the city's sky parks: a lush, green place that is untouched by the grief of the city below. He thinks, absurdly, of Chandrila. The home he'd given up alongside his name. He remembers being lead through a park much like this, years ago, his small fingers tucked into his father's calloused palm. He shakes his head, as if to dislodge the memory, then murmurs – perhaps to himself, perhaps to anyone nearby: ]  I don't recognize half of these plants.


( 0 0 4 ) » WILDCARD
 
[ feel free to pm me or hit me up at resurrectionist for plotting! ]

Comments

[warfares]

I'm blind. [ ㅡ it's snapped, sharp and brittle.

His jaw tightens but he forces himself to meet her gaze head-on. Forces back the shame that comes with the admission, the first time he's spoken the words out loud since waking here.

Speaking the words makes them real. ] You knew that and you used it.

[ In other words it'll be a warm day in Hoth before he apologizes. ]

No. [ He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. ]

Who would I turn them in to? [ "Them" rather than "us". He will have to work on that, he supposes. He's one of them now, after all. ]

[forcevisions]

[ She hadn't thought about that.

It's left her twitchy, fearful, ill at ease, and she had only just come to accept what that feeling she'd had with her for so long was. For Ben, it would be worse. A missing sense, a lost limb, a piece of himself carved out.

She doesn't look properly scolded, but there is something about her that softens slightly, and her choice not to argue the point makes it obvious — yes. She had used his blindness against him. Guilty as charged. This is the place they have been brought to by his betrayal. It's an ugly truth. ]

The government. The UNA. [ Said flatly. Obviously his lack of knowing where to turn hasn't convinced her that he won't sabotage them. ] They're rebels. [ And ? ?? Obviously. ]

[warfares]

And treachery is so much easier to swallow, [ he says finally, understanding.

She's trying to reconcile what she knows of him with this sudden shift in loyalties ㅡ and failing. No assurance he could possibly give her would be enough, even if he were inclined to give them.

He inhales, exhales, fingers curling against his palms. Lips pressed tight and tension focused. He misses his gloves. ] We're done here.

[ He starts forward, intending to push past her. ]

[forcevisions]

[ She reaches for his arm to stop him as he brushes past, but not because she wants to linger especially. Rather, he still hasn't provided her with good reason to believe otherwise. He can act offended all he wants; the fact of the matter he has presented no alternative to her interpretation of his motives for sneaking off like this.

Without one, she cannot stand to let him continue on without her intrusion.

But he's moving as though through her, and so her hand slips on his arm, down his sleeve to where his hands are also bare as he brushes past, and with a sudden, temporary shock, it's as though the bond is active again. His emotions flood her — the hurt, the defensiveness, the frustration. It all pours into her, just as she can guess that her hope and conflict and suspicion and her own injuries flow into him.

With it comes a flash of something else — guilty relief. She has not touched anyone since Murphy.

It lasts for only a moment, then they have separated and she has turned to address him, her hopes of stopping him still high even as she draws a steadying sharp inhale at the sudden deluge of emotion that doesn't belong to her. It's no clearer or muddier than across the bond, but it's different. Not the Force. Something else, but to a similar effect. Just like the rest of her powers.

Fleetingly she wonders if maybe it's just her. She hasn't heard anyone else mention it yet. But she can't let it stop her from the situation at hand either, even if she has been aching to feel it again, this ghost of the Force. Stubbornness settles back into her expression. ]

You haven't given me another explanation.

[warfares]

[ Ren recoils, looking stricken, as his mind is flushed with feelings that don't belong to him. ]

What ㅡ [ ㅡ no, wait. He knows what this is. Clarke had mentioned it in her most recent network. Emotion-sharing. Not the Force at all; it's too blunt, raw and unfocused.

Not the Force but it feels like it's been an age since he's felt any kind of connection beyond the frantic flutter of his own panic that there's something in him that wants to seize hold of it, anyway. To keep it close.

His hand falls back to his side, jaw working. He looks away and then he looks back at her. Like he's seeing her for the first time. Did we ever know each other truly? Was it only ever the bond? ]

[forcevisions]

[ Even without the bond, without the connection sustained, his thoughts closely mirror her own. She sees the tension that ripples through him, and it occurs to her too. They're practically strangers without this and without the Force. The connection he had felt to her was only from delving her mind, from hoping to raise her up as his apprentice, and then fueled by the bond Snoke created.

This hapless way she circles him has everything to do with Snoke's meddling and the Force and nothing to do with them. It is an artifice, a tool meant to manipulate them. But she doesn't want to believe that. She had dreamed of him before she'd seen him, and of Luke, and that lightsaber had called to her. She may not be able to reach the Force, but she can still believe in it, and trust its influence.

Strangely, she finds herself feeling better — surer — with this thought. She does not need to feel the Force to be whole, and it assuages some of the itch she has felt towards connecting with people in this way. She curls her hands into fists. ]

Tell me why you're sneaking around.

[warfares]

I'm not sneaking. [ a beat, then an exhale that bleeds some of the tension from him: ] I was looking for one of the bodies ㅡ the crabs.

[ He'd heard stories of other creatures appearing during the attacks: serpentine things that darted quickly and pounced, and of course there had been the dogs ㅡ ] The weather runs hot and the meat will spoil if left out too long.

[ There, he doesn't say, though it's clear enough in how he looks at her ㅡ angry, resigned ㅡ Are you satisfied? ]

[forcevisions]

Who cares if the meat spoils?

[ She's at least willing to entertain this explanation now that it has been provided, but she doesn't appear to be drawing the connections that he expects. More importantly, she is immune to his angry resignation. She has seen worse. ]

[warfares]

I do.

[ Obviously. ]

And the people that will be studying it will care: meat, blood, bones, tissue ㅡ [ ㅡvenom. ]

It's just lying out there, in the open.

[ He doesn't know how to sit still, to be idle. Doing something is better than doing nothing, and someone will want answers.

He certainly does. ]

[forcevisions]

[ Studying animal carcasses has never been a worthy pursuit for a child who grew up hand-to-mouth. The notion of information for information's sake, cold intellectualism, and removed study escapes her.

It's important to him. He's taking it seriously. She has to assume it's because he has a plan she just doesn't quite grasp. So she gestures ahead as if to indicate that they can walk and talk, then shakes her head. ]

Study it for what?

[warfares]

To learn where they came from.

[ Because while the larger beast might be denied to them, the smaller ones were not. Not yet. And since it appears that they had sprung from the larger creature, there must be some link.

He isn't a biologist, though. He was barely an academic even when he lived under that other name, teaching himself forgotten arts for the novelty of it. ]

And who might have sent them.

[forcevisions]

What does that have to do with us?

[ It's less abrasive than her other questions have been, searching. In their present position, it would be in bad faith to turn down any leads. But she doesn't see the link, and the cordoned off site of the large creature seems to imply that the UNA would be doing its own research into that for the people.

She'd assumed he would endorse the UNA's apparent militant control. They're not quite as soulless as the First Order's brainwashed army of stormtroopers, but surely he can see the similarities. Instead he's pushing himself into it. But then, he had torn Snoke down to. It's helping her orient her understanding of that choice. It's not that he likes the control of such an empire abstractly, but that he wants to possess it himself.

It makes sense. She could empathize with the need for control, certainly. It helps make sense of a chaotic universe. That doesn't make it right. ]

[warfares]

The timing of the attack didn't strike you as suspicious?

[ It's a reach, perhaps — likely, even; except that there had been no protocols in place for the attack, suggesting that it had been the first time they had fended off such an attack.

the subsequent media blackout only really supported this. The city had been caught off-guard, it's police and military shamed. And someone, somewhere, possessed the means to pull people from alternate worlds and points in time.

So, it might well be a reach but it was a reach worth pursuing. And perhaps the knowledge might be worth something to someone.

As to the matter of his personal politics — well. She would believe whatever she chose to on that score; the slight on his honor stung more than her suspicion had, though just barely. ]

[forcevisions]

[ There it is. Understanding ripples through her expression. ]

You think it came from outside their galaxy, like we did.

[ While they can't know how they'd appeared, the fact that it had appeared suddenly and mysteriously certainly seemed a coincidence, now that he pointed it out. ]

Who are you going to bring the samples to? Clarke?

[warfares]

[ A soft hum of agreement.

The alternative is that it had been grown here, somewhere, and released deliberately — though the question then became: to what end? ] Maybe.

[ The journey back to the junction doesn't take long. Ren doesn't return the knife to his pack but instead keeps it tucked away discreetly. ]

I haven't decided yet.

[forcevisions]

[ Well, Rey has. About one thing, at least — ]

I'm coming with you.

[ It's a start. Any lead is better than none. ]

[warfares]

To what end? [ he asks, fingers sliding along the strap of his pack. And it's not because he's surprised that she wants to join him (she has made her suspicions clear, now; he's on notice) but because he'll not have her loitering, costing them time and disrupting his focus.

Now she can be the one that explains herself. ]

[forcevisions]

To help.

[ Her motives are lightyears more straightforward than his. He has made a solid point about the utility of such an endeavor, and now she's on board. The end. ]

[warfares]

Do you know how?

[ He's turning as he asks it, starting back the way that they came. A quick glance skyward — the sky is a blur of lilac and indigo with pink-gold creeping in at the edges — and then his attention moves back to the alley.

The safe-house is situated in a quiet part of town but that doesn't mean that it's wholly absent of life. Right now it's mostly vagrants, those that have wandered too far or never made it to any of the impromptu shelters. The forgotten. ]

[forcevisions]

Do I know have to scavenge parts off something dead and broken?

[ Bone dry. Jakku desert dry. She's insulted him worse, though. ]

Yeah. I've had some experience. [ More seriously, ] I've eaten worse.

[warfares]

[ Stripping a carcass feels like it should be different in some way — messier, certainly, the kind of thing that might stir up an uneasy sickness in the stomach of the unprepared — but perhaps he's wrong. Perhaps it is as simple as stripping a ship of its usable parts, polishing them and then selling them off to the most interested (or generous) party. ]

So have I. [ he adds absently, though it's been six years, give or take, since he had to hunt for his own food. Skills that might well have gone to rust in that time. ]

Though I doubt any of this meat will be edible.

[forcevisions]

[ Confusion flits through her expression. Not Ben Solo, silver spoon in his mouth, child of Rebellion heroes. What purpose could he have for scavenging food from the carcasses of whatever was around in the wild? But he hadn't, of course. It sinks in just as her mouth opens, a sound in the back of her throat aborted before it comes to fruition. It is not Ben Solo, child of Han and Leia, but Ben Solo student to Luke who has hunted.

Of course he had. She'd seen Luke on the island, busying himself with survival skills. At the time she'd fancied that it had made them similar in some way. ]

Right. [ She wouldn't have let it sitting out have stopped her, necessarily, in more desperate times. But there is food at Morningstar's safehouse. She does not need to reach for rotten meat. (She has done it before. Definitions of 'edible' change with circumstances.) ] Eating it's not the point, so that's fine.

[warfares]

I mean — [ he shoots her a look over his shoulder, catching that shiver of emotion that starts in confusion and ends in realization. He feels gratified in having surprised her. ] that the meat is probably toxic.

Not that it will stop others from trying. [ Starvation tended to rob you of the luxury of being squeamish. And after a lifetime diet of insects ㅡ assuming they even had that much ㅡ any meat was bound to look tempting.

It means they must move quickly, though. Against time, against the desperate. Fortunately, they don't have much further to travel. ]

[forcevisions]

What makes you think that?

[ Toxic is different than rancid. There had been venomous things living on Jakku, too, but they weren't poisonous. If you ate around the parts which held the venom … But it's different, apparently, and she has the good sense to assume he wouldn't leap to that conclusion without reason. ]

[warfares]

One of the crabs caught me on the way back to the safe-house. [ He rolls up a sleeve, exposes, reluctantly, the bracelet of raised skin encircling a wrist. The same wrist she'd caught earlier when she'd reached for him. ]

I spent the night on the supermarket floor.