#tros fanfic
A new story by delia-pavorum
luminous beings | rated: M | chapter 1/2
An exploration of Rey’s unseen grief over Ben’s death at the end of TROS.
(feat. Force Ghost Ben and a happy ending.)
preview:
The moment he is gone she forgets how to grieve.
The first and only thing she feels is pain, sharp and unyielding, like she has been run through by a lightsaber right in the soft spot at the base of her neck.
The pain fades quickly and is replaced instead by a hollowness that spreads from the centre of her chest outwards; an implacable coldness that consumes her quickly. She feels her face ease from its tormented grimace into something that might have almost been considered serene if it didn’t feel so much like a brumal death from within. She exhales softly, a light breath released from lips that have gone numb.
Her hands dazedly pat the soft material of his tunic, still warm from his body, as though she has somehow just missed him. As though she’ll still make contact with a solid form underneath and within.
Instead, all she encounters is the scrabbled ground beneath the fabric. There is no warm, breathing, living man within. It is now just an overlay for the hard unyielding rock below.
Had it truly been just moments before that she had held him in her arms, legs spread across his, their chests touching?
Was it really only seconds prior where their lips had met, held and captured, his mouth moving against her own? The feel of his fevered breath expelling from his nose and hitting her cheek as they desperately, awkwardly tasted each other for the first time? His arms hefting her, holding her, crushing her to him?
Had it even really happened?
For a moment she wonders if maybe she is dead again.
Maybe she is still dead.
Maybe she was always dead?
The feeling is the same, after all. The feeling of being trapped in that horrid liminal space where she had screamed and screamed in isolated terror, her voice singular amongst the endless stars; that inky blackness symbolizing a blank eternity.
Her throat feels raw, raw like she is still screaming although her face does not move aside from the slow descent of her eyelids, blink after painful blink.
Her breath comes out in short bursts as she scrambles up on shaky legs. At the last second she reaches down and grasps the shirt still on the ground, crumpling it up and sticking it under her arm. Her feet feel like leaden weights, knees wobbling, the coldness in her chest beginning to feel like an icy burn.
And she starts to move.
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