I'm fine. I promise. It's nothing like that. Please don't worry about me.
[ but is she really? that citation makes her skin crawl. ]
But I got a citation. And it's going to mean posting something to the public network that I'd rather you learned from me directly.
Because it'll involve my Dominant.
[ she's trying to spit out the words but she keeps feeling like she's not giving enough context, then stumbling back to provide that. she doesn't have models for how to have conversations like this. she's never had to, before. she's never had people before. but finn is her people.
[ which is what he sends before the rest of the messages come in, and then he watches and waits for the rest. it's not a secret that she has a dominant; she'd mentioned that she'd been able to find someone to contract with, although he hadn't pressed for details, assuming that she'd just found someone in the city to help her.
but then the last message makes his stomach sink like a rock. ]
Why?
[ did she feel like she had to? did he force her into it in some way? having confirmation now that kylo ren is back in duplicity again is creating an uneasy feeling as it is.
knowing he's linked to rey now, like that, is something else altogether. ]
but telling him that this was a selfless act putting herself in this position in a misguided attempt to protect others, that it was the only way of having power over kylo ren without winding up in the zoo for attacking a dominant, would be a lie. contracting with kylo ren, using that excuse, spares her from having to submit herself to anyone else — anyone she isn't already inextricably tied to by the force. ]
It was my idea.
[ she'd stormed into his place of work and demanded it, in fact. ]
There's something connecting us.
[ she's still hiding behind this outside force. she can't bring herself to admit that she simply feels something, that there's a kinship there and emotional intimacy that she shudders at the prospect of sharing with anyone else. ]
I don't know how to explain it.
[ she feels guilty about that, a little. why wouldn't she? ]
[ the truth of it is, even when he sits back and lets the message on his device linger for a second without responding to it right away, scrubbing a hand over the bottom half of his face — this is something he's already aware of, to an extent. going back and living out more of what's supposed to happen at home, learning that they have some kind of link that he doesn't fully understand.
how many times had he gone after her to try and keep her safe, only to discover her facing off with him? and now he's here, again, and it's not like whatever connection they have would have suddenly disappeared just because they're in another world.
logically, he shouldn't be surprised by it.
but he's not thinking very logically right now. ]
But you didn't want to tell me.
[ because if she's been contracted with him this entire time, it's been a secret, and the only reason she's coming to him now is to prevent him from being surprised. otherwise, he thinks, she probably wouldn't have contacted him like this. ]
Rey, you had other options. You didn't have to go to him for this.
[ it wouldn't have felt good to ask rev or wrathion or poe to contract with her, but she could have done it. she knows that. she could have asked klaus or hope or anduin. they're all good people in different ways, with good hearts, and they probably wouldn't hold it over her if they'd had the means to consider taking her on at all.
and they'd be the ones to pay for the citations, and the zoo, and all the other trouble she can't stay out of. how could she ask any of them to face that when all she wants is to keep them safe? but she can ask kylo ren.
more than that, she's going to be vulnerable and exposed to kylo ren no matter what. leaning on that protects her from having to willingly submit herself to that kind of intimacy with anyone else. it doesn't come easy for her. ]
That's why I didn't want to tell you. I knew I'd have to admit that it wasn't because I had to.
[ she chose this. and she chose it because she wants it. she's invented a hundred reasons why she has to, in order to excuse it, but only that one is the truth. she can't let go of ben solo. ]
[ it’s not like he’s been constantly keeping track of her whereabouts and whether she’s been getting on okay here, but those times he has noticed her having conversations on the network with other people... well, he wasn’t snooping, really. or at least not trying to. paying enough attention to know that she might have other people to go to, if not him. if not poe.
he gets that it comes back to her not wanting to ask them for help, maybe. but for some reason she felt like she could go to kylo ren instead, for all of it. because he does know that contracts can be non-sexual too — there are family members contracted in this city, after all — but for a split second that’s not where his mind goes and the feeling he gets in the pit of his stomach... he kind of hates himself for it a little. being envious. being jealous. feeling like, regardless of whatever they have, it wasn’t enough. ]
I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t
I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me.
[ he still doesn’t understand it. he’s not sure he ever will, fully. ]
[ she's the one who makes that choice. none of her friends need to trust him with her. she chokes down the bristling defensiveness she feels — i can take care of myself.
she's doing this because she doesn't want to lose finn. the last thing she needs is to bite his head off because she's defensive. there's a reason she did this as text. ]
I put in our contract that he can't hurt anyone I'm spending time with.
Which will keep me out of the zoo for turning my lightsaber against a Dominant.
[ that's a good thing. she needs finn to understand why that might be a good thing, even if he can't understand her feelings. ]
[ if it sounds a little more sarcastic, that's because it is; he's not exactly feeling very friendly toward the guy who tried to kill him once and left him unconscious for weeks as a result.
either way, the shock of the moment has worn off and now he's just... confused. hurt. angry. mostly hurt. ]
I know you don't need me to point out that if you've even thought about turning your lightsaber on him, a contract doesn't seem like the way to go here.
[ but for whatever reason, reasons he can't hope to parse through and isn't even sure he wants to try right now, she's made this choice. ]
[ she's tried so hard to fight against those gunshy instincts to avoid vulnerability, to be honest and present him with the messiest parts of herself because she wants to trust him to not reject them, and —
and it feels like he has. his snappish reply, aware of its own patronizing tone, feels to rey like an oversimplification. she loses the thread of her patience. ]
I want you to trust me.
[ to look out for herself, to know what kind of contract is the kind she wants to make (what does that even mean, she wonders, when the entire system seems more dysfunctional than ever her own choice — is there a better one?). to make the right choices.
but it's not just finn. she feels like she's defending herself against the reality of that vision, against rey palpatine, and right now she's acting out of absolute fear that he sees her as that instead of as she wants to be. if he saw that in her, it'd destroy her. ]
[ how does he make it clear that his trusting her in the first place is why this hurts so much? that learning that she'd been withholding the truth from him, paired with everything else that's happened — her refusal to let him help her in some way, to let poe help her — is making him start to question whether the same holds true for her anymore. ]
But I don't think you trust me.
[ even her coming to him now feels like more of an attempt at damage control, a way to head off the situation before he would have seen her with him. nothing extended because she wants to finally give him the truth, but because he would have found out anyway.
there are things he could tell her, things he could say. he could confess that he knows the end of what happens, that he's gone back and lived through all of it — the end of the order, the rest of the galaxy coming to help the resistance in their hour of need, the relief of seeing her again and knowing she'd made it through.
maybe it would help.
or maybe it wouldn't make one bit of difference. ]
But if I'd come to you before, you would have just told me not to. And you still would have been confused when I did it anyway because you don't understand and I don't expect you to because I barely understand. So what's the point of saying it?
I don't want you to look at me differently.
[ that's what it really comes down to. she thinks so poorly of herself, and finn thinks so highly, and she would hate to lose him and she would hate for him to see in her what she sees, what her parents saw. but anakin hadn't been repulsed that she was the child of palpatine, nor obi wan kenobi, so maybe finn won't be repulsed by what feels to rey like it follows from that. ]
[ she'd said something almost like that to him before — not here, but at home. and for a second he doesn't know if that's in reference to this or something else, like she's worried about where she comes from. he'd told her then that it wouldn't make a difference to him, and it still doesn't. ]
That's the problem. I don't.
[ which is why learning she's been contracted to someone who's tried to hurt — who has hurt — so many people is the piece of it that stings. maybe some part of him had still been hoping that eventually, they'd be able to have something like what they had before.
and now he's pretty certain that possibility is gone. ]
[ it feels vaguely ominous — like he is changing the way he sees her, or deciding that he needs to. and the fear of what that might mean threatens to choke her. ]
To think that things could just be like that again.
[ it's why he'd been reluctant to even say anything about what had happened before, not just between the two of them but with poe too. like it'd be weighing her down under expectation when she deserved to figure out what she wanted on her own. ]
[ anything else she wants feels too muddy. but she knows that everything she's done, she's done to try to avoid jeopardizing that or risking harm coming to him — physical, emotional. he's too important to her. and now it feels like somehow he's slipping away from her.
and she'd thought ... well, now she feels stupid for it, a bit. the way he'd looked at her, she thought it was because of the same. there's something intense about her friendships — beyond what most people would regard as strictly platonic because she's never categorized. she'd never thought it was just because finn had always felt this way for her, wanted something different. she'd thought that was a development in duplicity. ]
[ but now things are complicated. he'd tried to convince himself that he could compartmentalize his feelings for her, tuck them away and just let this time happen however it would.
some of it's a product of duplicity and how long he's been here, sure, because they wouldn't have been put in half the situations they have back home, situations that forced intimacy when otherwise they might not have been involved. but some of it is just her. maybe he wouldn't have realized it as soon without being brought here, but it doesn't change the existence or the nature of those feelings. ]
[ and he's not just talking about this conversation, or being present for her, although that's part of it. he has been here — for years, since the first day he woke up in one of those paper gowns. her arriving, poe arriving. her disappearing, poe disappearing. both of them coming back again. disappearing again. coming back.
How can you be around me if you can't accept my choices?
It's not rhetorical, Finn. I don't I haven't done this. I don't understand. I don't know how to do this.
[ where 'do this' is 'have friends.' and she feels nauseous even saying it because she knows that she's the problem because she has never had people and she doesn't know how to weather real interpersonal conflict with them without being afraid that everything and anything could be abandonment. ]
[ it's a long time before he even says anything in response. ]
Maybe I can't.
[ because he doesn't know how to make her see how this isn't just about them. it's picking someone who hurt him, who's hurt poe. and he knows if he even so much as mentions han or leia it might be going one step too far, but it doesn't make that less true either. ]
You want Rey Skywalker back. You want someone that I can't be.
[ she wishes that she could. she wishes there were space in her to be everything finn believes her to be and also reconcile this connection she has to ben solo.
but it doesn't feel like she has a choice. they're stuck together. that connection exists whether she wants it or not — and the lonely child on jakku who just wanted someone to love her does want it, that impossible connection. she may not be able to get free of the force bond's implications, but neither can ben leave her like it feels like finn is doing now.
she'd never have said she wanted it more. it still doesn't feel like she does. it just feels like being torn apart. and she understands, then, ben's conflict. he could neither be everything his family wanted for him and true to his nature. finn is her family, and she doesn't feel like she can either.
shutting him out wouldn't change that she had been drawn to him, that it had been true since ahch-to. it wouldn't make her into the shape that she thinks finn wants. she entertains it for a moment anyway, but it's just regressing to the mean. denial. if she wants to make finn understand, then she needs to understand in a way that makes it possible to explain at all. she can't keep avoiding the truth of that pull. she has to confront it. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[ but is she really? that citation makes her skin crawl. ]
But I got a citation. And it's going to mean posting something to the public network that I'd rather you learned from me directly.
Because it'll involve my Dominant.
[ she's trying to spit out the words but she keeps feeling like she's not giving enough context, then stumbling back to provide that. she doesn't have models for how to have conversations like this. she's never had to, before. she's never had people before. but finn is her people.
which is precisely what makes this terrifying. ]
I contracted with Kylo Ren.
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[ which is what he sends before the rest of the messages come in, and then he watches and waits for the rest. it's not a secret that she has a dominant; she'd mentioned that she'd been able to find someone to contract with, although he hadn't pressed for details, assuming that she'd just found someone in the city to help her.
but then the last message makes his stomach sink like a rock. ]
Why?
[ did she feel like she had to? did he force her into it in some way? having confirmation now that kylo ren is back in duplicity again is creating an uneasy feeling as it is.
knowing he's linked to rey now, like that, is something else altogether. ]
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but telling him that this was a selfless act putting herself in this position in a misguided attempt to protect others, that it was the only way of having power over kylo ren without winding up in the zoo for attacking a dominant, would be a lie. contracting with kylo ren, using that excuse, spares her from having to submit herself to anyone else — anyone she isn't already inextricably tied to by the force. ]
It was my idea.
[ she'd stormed into his place of work and demanded it, in fact. ]
There's something connecting us.
[ she's still hiding behind this outside force. she can't bring herself to admit that she simply feels something, that there's a kinship there and emotional intimacy that she shudders at the prospect of sharing with anyone else. ]
I don't know how to explain it.
[ she feels guilty about that, a little. why wouldn't she? ]
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how many times had he gone after her to try and keep her safe, only to discover her facing off with him? and now he's here, again, and it's not like whatever connection they have would have suddenly disappeared just because they're in another world.
logically, he shouldn't be surprised by it.
but he's not thinking very logically right now. ]
But you didn't want to tell me.
[ because if she's been contracted with him this entire time, it's been a secret, and the only reason she's coming to him now is to prevent him from being surprised. otherwise, he thinks, she probably wouldn't have contacted him like this. ]
Rey, you had other options. You didn't have to go to him for this.
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[ it wouldn't have felt good to ask rev or wrathion or poe to contract with her, but she could have done it. she knows that. she could have asked klaus or hope or anduin. they're all good people in different ways, with good hearts, and they probably wouldn't hold it over her if they'd had the means to consider taking her on at all.
and they'd be the ones to pay for the citations, and the zoo, and all the other trouble she can't stay out of. how could she ask any of them to face that when all she wants is to keep them safe? but she can ask kylo ren.
more than that, she's going to be vulnerable and exposed to kylo ren no matter what. leaning on that protects her from having to willingly submit herself to that kind of intimacy with anyone else. it doesn't come easy for her. ]
That's why I didn't want to tell you. I knew I'd have to admit that it wasn't because I had to.
[ she chose this. and she chose it because she wants it. she's invented a hundred reasons why she has to, in order to excuse it, but only that one is the truth. she can't let go of ben solo. ]
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he gets that it comes back to her not wanting to ask them for help, maybe. but for some reason she felt like she could go to kylo ren instead, for all of it. because he does know that contracts can be non-sexual too — there are family members contracted in this city, after all — but for a split second that’s not where his mind goes and the feeling he gets in the pit of his stomach... he kind of hates himself for it a little. being envious. being jealous. feeling like, regardless of whatever they have, it wasn’t enough. ]
I don’t know what you want me to say.
I don’tI’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me.
[ he still doesn’t understand it. he’s not sure he ever will, fully. ]
I don’t trust him with this. I can’t.
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[ she's the one who makes that choice. none of her friends need to trust him with her. she chokes down the bristling defensiveness she feels — i can take care of myself.
she's doing this because she doesn't want to lose finn. the last thing she needs is to bite his head off because she's defensive. there's a reason she did this as text. ]
I put in our contract that he can't hurt anyone I'm spending time with.
Which will keep me out of the zoo for turning my lightsaber against a Dominant.
[ that's a good thing. she needs finn to understand why that might be a good thing, even if he can't understand her feelings. ]
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[ if it sounds a little more sarcastic, that's because it is; he's not exactly feeling very friendly toward the guy who tried to kill him once and left him unconscious for weeks as a result.
either way, the shock of the moment has worn off and now he's just... confused. hurt. angry. mostly hurt. ]
I know you don't need me to point out that if you've even thought about turning your lightsaber on him, a contract doesn't seem like the way to go here.
[ but for whatever reason, reasons he can't hope to parse through and isn't even sure he wants to try right now, she's made this choice. ]
I don't know what you want me to say.
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and it feels like he has. his snappish reply, aware of its own patronizing tone, feels to rey like an oversimplification. she loses the thread of her patience. ]
I want you to trust me.
[ to look out for herself, to know what kind of contract is the kind she wants to make (what does that even mean, she wonders, when the entire system seems more dysfunctional than ever her own choice — is there a better one?). to make the right choices.
but it's not just finn. she feels like she's defending herself against the reality of that vision, against rey palpatine, and right now she's acting out of absolute fear that he sees her as that instead of as she wants to be. if he saw that in her, it'd destroy her. ]
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[ how does he make it clear that his trusting her in the first place is why this hurts so much? that learning that she'd been withholding the truth from him, paired with everything else that's happened — her refusal to let him help her in some way, to let poe help her — is making him start to question whether the same holds true for her anymore. ]
But I don't think you trust me.
[ even her coming to him now feels like more of an attempt at damage control, a way to head off the situation before he would have seen her with him. nothing extended because she wants to finally give him the truth, but because he would have found out anyway.
there are things he could tell her, things he could say. he could confess that he knows the end of what happens, that he's gone back and lived through all of it — the end of the order, the rest of the galaxy coming to help the resistance in their hour of need, the relief of seeing her again and knowing she'd made it through.
maybe it would help.
or maybe it wouldn't make one bit of difference. ]
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But if I'd come to you before, you would have just told me not to. And you still would have been confused when I did it anyway because you don't understand and I don't expect you to because I barely understand. So what's the point of saying it?
I don't want you to look at me differently.
[ that's what it really comes down to. she thinks so poorly of herself, and finn thinks so highly, and she would hate to lose him and she would hate for him to see in her what she sees, what her parents saw. but anakin hadn't been repulsed that she was the child of palpatine, nor obi wan kenobi, so maybe finn won't be repulsed by what feels to rey like it follows from that. ]
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That's the problem. I don't.
[ which is why learning she's been contracted to someone who's tried to hurt — who has hurt — so many people is the piece of it that stings. maybe some part of him had still been hoping that eventually, they'd be able to have something like what they had before.
and now he's pretty certain that possibility is gone. ]
But how I look at you isn't fair either.
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[ it feels vaguely ominous — like he is changing the way he sees her, or deciding that he needs to. and the fear of what that might mean threatens to choke her. ]
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To think that things could just be like that again.
[ it's why he'd been reluctant to even say anything about what had happened before, not just between the two of them but with poe too. like it'd be weighing her down under expectation when she deserved to figure out what she wanted on her own. ]
Not if you want something else.
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[ anything else she wants feels too muddy. but she knows that everything she's done, she's done to try to avoid jeopardizing that or risking harm coming to him — physical, emotional. he's too important to her. and now it feels like somehow he's slipping away from her.
and she'd thought ... well, now she feels stupid for it, a bit. the way he'd looked at her, she thought it was because of the same. there's something intense about her friendships — beyond what most people would regard as strictly platonic because she's never categorized. she'd never thought it was just because finn had always felt this way for her, wanted something different. she'd thought that was a development in duplicity. ]
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[ but now things are complicated. he'd tried to convince himself that he could compartmentalize his feelings for her, tuck them away and just let this time happen however it would.
some of it's a product of duplicity and how long he's been here, sure, because they wouldn't have been put in half the situations they have back home, situations that forced intimacy when otherwise they might not have been involved. but some of it is just her. maybe he wouldn't have realized it as soon without being brought here, but it doesn't change the existence or the nature of those feelings. ]
I think I just need some time.
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It feels like you're leaving.
[ which makes her feel like she's suffocating because it's just like her parents. ]
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[ and he's not just talking about this conversation, or being present for her, although that's part of it. he has been here — for years, since the first day he woke up in one of those paper gowns. her arriving, poe arriving. her disappearing, poe disappearing. both of them coming back again. disappearing again. coming back.
he's been here for all of it. ]
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Time.
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About the contract. About... what it means.
It's just a lot to think about.
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[ she can't force him to spend time with her. she can't force him to look at her like he used to. all she can do is hurt. ]
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But I can't be okay with you choosing to do this with him. I'm not... there, right now.
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It's not rhetorical, Finn. I don't
I haven't done this. I don't understand. I don't know how to do this.
[ where 'do this' is 'have friends.' and she feels nauseous even saying it because she knows that she's the problem because she has never had people and she doesn't know how to weather real interpersonal conflict with them without being afraid that everything and anything could be abandonment. ]
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Maybe I can't.
[ because he doesn't know how to make her see how this isn't just about them. it's picking someone who hurt him, who's hurt poe. and he knows if he even so much as mentions han or leia it might be going one step too far, but it doesn't make that less true either. ]
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You want Rey Skywalker back. You want someone that I can't be.
[ she wishes that she could. she wishes there were space in her to be everything finn believes her to be and also reconcile this connection she has to ben solo.
but it doesn't feel like she has a choice. they're stuck together. that connection exists whether she wants it or not — and the lonely child on jakku who just wanted someone to love her does want it, that impossible connection. she may not be able to get free of the force bond's implications, but neither can ben leave her like it feels like finn is doing now.
she'd never have said she wanted it more. it still doesn't feel like she does. it just feels like being torn apart. and she understands, then, ben's conflict. he could neither be everything his family wanted for him and true to his nature. finn is her family, and she doesn't feel like she can either.
shutting him out wouldn't change that she had been drawn to him, that it had been true since ahch-to. it wouldn't make her into the shape that she thinks finn wants. she entertains it for a moment anyway, but it's just regressing to the mean. denial. if she wants to make finn understand, then she needs to understand in a way that makes it possible to explain at all. she can't keep avoiding the truth of that pull. she has to confront it. ]
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