The Call of the Light (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER 14

Tatooine-Outer Rim:

Ben came out of the small bathroom. He had showered and put on black pants and an anthracite gray tunic. He obviously still appreciated dark colors.

They had not exchanged a word after their intense experience a few minutes earlier. Both of them had come to their senses and Ben had jumped straight into the room behind the kitchen, leaving her panting and particularly shaken in the middle of the living room.

She knew now what had happened to him: the mutiny, and Ben hiding here for months while sharing the daily life of this woman, Sovan Real, and her son. She'd had access to life scenes, sensations, moments of doubt and confusion. Ben had meditated a lot and his fiery temper seemed to have subsided. Yet his convictions and his ideals had been called into question, and Rey had been able to feel his frustration and disappointment. He was helpless, did not know what to think or what to do. The conflict that ripped his soul had never been so violent, and the call of the Light never so deafening.

When Ben finally joined her in the living room, he took great care not to meet her eyes. He walked past her to take another look through the window, and a sweet smell of clean assaulted her nostrils. Rey then straightened instinctively in her seat. She was stinking, covered in dust from head to toe, with her top sticking to her skin.

She had the impression of her thoughts being spoken aloud when he said to her, "You can take a shower if you want to, and wash your clothes."

The scavenger didn't hesitate anymore. She got up and went to the bathroom but stopped in the doorway, realizing that she had nothing to wear until her clothes went into the sonicator.

"There should be clean laundry in the drawer next to you," she heard him add from the living room.

No. She was not going to wear one of his tunics, was she?

Her reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall swept away her last reluctance. Her three little buns were messy, her right cheek was covered with blood and, because of her goggles, she had two white circles around her eyes which made her looked like one of those little fructivorous creatures living in the forests of Arbra. She opened the drawer and took the first shirt from the pile. She then entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

She finally relaxed a little and removed the comlink hidden in her bra. It was sheer luck that she didn't lose it in the storm, and Ben didn't search her and find it. She activated the device and tried to contact C-3PO. After four unsuccessful attempts, she gave up. Something was scrambling the signal. Probably this damn storm. It was impossible to warn the droids that she had found Ben, so that they in turn could warn Leia. She gave an angry little grunt before hiding the comlink under the sink and taking off her dirty clothes with a sigh. She would have preferred to feel a stream of cool water pouring down her body, but the sonic shower was already better than nothing. She suspected that here, as on Jakku, water was a precious commodity that was not wasted on showering. Once clean, she ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it and examined the wound on her temple. The cut was not very deep and had already stopped bleeding. Better still, the drumming in her head had stopped. She put on the white linen shirt and rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. She picked up her things and added them to Ben's clothing in the sonicator near the shower, and then started the wash cycle.

She could wait here an hour, in the tiny bathroom, until her clothes were clean. But after five minutes of standing between the shower and the sink, she decided to go out.

Ben was eating a piece of brown bread, sitting by the window. On the coffee table, a piece of the same kind of bread and a bowl of steaming soup awaited her. When he saw her arriving in the living room, he stopped chewing. The shirt, though too big for her, scarcely covered the top of her tanned thighs, on which Ben's eyes lingered a little too long. Suddenly embarrassed by his own boldness, and seeing that Rey was now blushing, he lowered his eyes and went back to eating.