─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
fade: chapter eighteen
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
TIME SEEMS TO PASS so incredibly slowly. It feels as if months go by, but it could be just weeks, she cannot quite tell. Florence has shut off her emotional availability to the point where she is nothing but a shell of who she used to be. It's been a minute since she trained, she can no longer afford those relationships, emotions. Sometimes she supervises groups of cadets in training, but rarely does she actually join in. She is avoiding everyone and everything.
Ben is desperate to reach her again, but she has closed herself off. The feelings are still there but they're both at a point where they hardly even speak to each other. She's trying to shut him out no matter how hard it is — every time she passes his door she thinks about knocking. Every time she walks away. He hears her sometimes, feels her presence and he hopes that she'll finally be ready again. He won't push her.
But he does find himself in her quarters today, another attempt to talk to her. Lately he's been doing this every day, just stopping by in an attempt to make small talk, and she's hardly responded.
"Do you want to continue your training?" Ben asks, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. Florence is sat by the small round table right in front of her window, seemingly just staring into the wall. It's a quite haunting sight.
She shakes her head. "No," she replies calmly, gently taking a sip from the glass she holds in her hand. At this point, she is honestly just doing the very most to piss him off. She doesn't want to become stronger, doesn't want to train with him because it gives her more reason to stay and lately she finds herself trying to sever herself from this life by distancing herself from everything and everyone she's gotten to know.
But Ben is different. It's easy shutting Hux and Kez out, but Ben feels like a part of her that she's not so sure she wants him gone. Not fully, at least.
Perhaps it is a bit ironic, but Ben hardly recognizes her anymore, just as she has felt about him so many times. It's frightening, the way he looks at her and can't seem to remember how she looks when she smiles. "Who are you?"
She looks at him, lips tweaked downwards in a confused frown. "I'm the woman you want me to be. Am I not?" She raises a defiant brow.
He shakes his head; he never wanted her to be anyone other than the woman he fell in love with. He never wanted her to become someone she isn't in an effort to please him.
She nods, jaw clenched. Gently, she sets the glass down on the table. She feels anger rising in her veins. This isn't her doing, this is his doing. She changed because of him. He turned her into someone else. She can hardly remember who and what she used to be like. She glances up at him and all she can feel is rage. In the corner of her eye she spots her blaster, laying on the top of a chest of drawers. Without thinking, in one swift motion, she uses the force to pull it to her and stands up, pointing it at Ben.
She acts so quickly, he barely registers what's happening before he's stood, holding his breath with the barrel of her blaster pressed against his forehead. He fears for his life then; not an ounce of doubt in his body that she wouldn't do it. She could. And she wants to. "Florence-"
"You broke me," she says through gritted teeth, voice sharp and demanding, but tone colored with devastation. She struggles for air, feeling tears wanting to make their way down her cheeks but she won't let them. "You took everything from me."
"I gave you a life," he counters, voice gentle, hands held up in the air as a sign of peace.
"No, you took my life away from me." She presses, finger wrapped around the trigger. She could pull it right now and everything would be over. Except it wouldn't.
"That's not true," he shakes his head. "I have given you a purpose. The only thing in life you were looking for when you joined us."
She sucks in a breath, eyes narrowed with fury. "You think you know me so well-"
"And I do. I do know you," he replies calmly.
"You don't know shit!" She shouts, hands trembling but she keeps the hold on the gun steady, determined.
"I know that I love you."
She stares at him in shock, lips slightly parted, eyes filled with confusion. "What?" She asks, grip around her blaster tightening after merely a second of letting her guard down.
"I am in love with you. And I know you love me too."
She closes her eyes, sighing desperately. Every feeling she's chased away, everything she's tried to suppress, it all comes back to her. "Please," she cries. "Stop." Shaking as the barrel presses into his forehead.
"I can't. I don't want to live without you." He says, eyes soft and warm and when their gazes meet, she falls down into the pit she's been trying to climb out of yet again.
She lowers the blaster. "I love you too," she whispers. "I'm just so lost." She places the blaster on the table, regretting everything she just did. Eyes filled with regret, she looks at him, begging for forgiveness with just her expression.
"We all are," he pulls her into a hug. She listens to his heartbeat quickly slowing down. "And that's okay."
She inhales his scent, feeling comfort in his hold. In his arms — she feels at home. Safe. So much love. "I'm so sorry," she mumbles into his chest. She cannot ignore her feelings. She has tried for a while but they just will not go away.
And the twisted truth is that she feels loved by him; she feels held by him. Through all, every feeling remains the same.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
SHE HAS TO PULL A HANDFUL of strings, but she uses her undeniable charisma to steal some ingredients to make dinner ( plus, it turns out she had a couple of favors to turn in with a lot more people than she could remember ). She hasn't cooked in years, but she has faith in her ability to make a decent meal. Her mother taught her well, surely she should be able to make something. Truthfully, she doesn't think she should be the one to do the apologizing, but if she must be the one to step up and say she's sorry in order to fix this mess, then she will. Because she'll probably be here forever, and she cannot stand the thought of being on bad terms with him for the rest of her life.
Maybe she is being a bit naive, but she really really hopes this will work to at least ease whatever tension that has built between them. She wants thing to be as they were in the very beginning, when it was just the two of them.
A bit out of practice, she struggles to compose a proper meal but soon enough she's made a stew much like her mother used to. It reminds her of childhood and tastes quite delicious, if she can say so herself, though her tastebuds may be skewed after years of eating bland first order meals. As the time draws near dinner, she starts to figure this might be a terrible idea.
But dinner is already made, the table is set. She glances at the setup, arms crossed over her chest as she tilts her head. This might be a bad idea, she thinks, but the food is already made. It's also getting colder with each passing minute of her hesitating, so she musters the courage and makes her way next door to his room, knocking delicately on the metal.
He's quick to open the door, looking rather perplexed with her presence. Just hours ago she had held a gun to his head in a state of pure and utter confusion, heartbreak and years of bottled up pain spilling out.
"Hi," she says, a soft smile forming on her lips. Her eyes are regretful, she wants to ask for forgiveness, to apologize for her actions more thoroughly but now is not the time and she cannot find the right words. But he understands either way — and he will not bring it up unless she does. Mostly, he blames himself for what happened. He knows how he has changed her, and perhaps he does hate himself for it, but he never meant to do any of that. He only acted on his feelings which were, and still are, true and vibrant. He loves her, but he knows well enough that it has hurt her.
"Hey," he replies casually. "You okay?" He asks, noticing her quite nervous manner, bouncing anxiously on her heels. Her smile is as see-through as glass.
She nods. "Yeah, I just, I wanna invite you to dinner. With me. Like right now."
A tad surprised, he tilts his head. "Alright, uhm, in the cafeteria?"
"What? Oh, no, sorry, I made dinner," she explains, eyebrows drawn together as she patiently and nervously awaits his answer.
He narrows his eyes, unconvinced. "I can't tell if you're being serious."
She glares at him. "Ben. I cooked dinner for the two of us all afternoon and you better get your ass over to my room right now."
"As you wish," he gestures for her to lead the way, shamelessly grinning like a fool at this rather strange situation. He is impressed, however, that she would go this far just to talk to him, a proper heart to heart. She never ceases to amaze him.
In her room, she's set up a proper dinner table, tablecloth covering the blank metallic surface. Candles, silverware and all. Ben wonders where in the hell she got all of this from, but it is a large ship, and he's not surprised she managed to pull this off. Knowing her, she came up with this probably just a few hours ago. And it looks perfect. Never has she let things be anything short of perfect. Perhaps he was that one exception.
She turns around to look at him. "My mother said to me once, that no marital problems can't be solved over a good dinner. We're not married, obviously, but I figured it still applicable."
He wants to kiss her there and then. "I'm sorry," he says. "For everything."
"As am I," she takes his hands. "I went out of control earlier today, I feel so horrible and-"
He is quick to cut her off. "Florence. Calm down. I understand. It was justified. I... I understand your pain, your confusion."
Their relationship was built on this from the very beginning. It was always what drew them to one another. The understanding. Seeing yourself in someone else, recognizing the things you're insecure about in another person — it became a place of comfort and eventually love.
She looks at him as every person wishes to be looked at; with gratefulness, with love, with thankfulness, with adoration. Every feeling of resentment has left her body. "Please, sit. I'm not a good cook, maybe at all, but i think it's the effort that counts."
Ben lets out a small chuckle as he sits down. "Anything would be better than the same thing we have every day," he assures her.
She nods, sitting down opposite like her mother always did during dinner. Her parents would always sit facing one another, exchanging words about their day, plans about the future, smiles, suggestive looks. Florence has never had that. "It's my mothers recipe, actually. Well, she might have stole it off of someone else, but, she'd make this all the time when I was a child."
He nods, thinking that his own mother would love Florence, they would get along incredibly well. And then he thinks about when he almost shot at her. Perhaps she thinks he did, he hopes not. He couldn't bring himself to, and he wishes so desperately that he'd stopped the other TIE fighters from doing it.
She knows she shouldn't but she notices him spacing out for a moment, so she listens to his thoughts. The mention of her mother was what sent him into a spiral of thoughts, memories, regret, pain.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks, pulling him out of his mind. He looks at her, confused for a beat before he realizes what she's talking about. "You don't have to I just-"
"It's okay, I think I should." he assures her. "I was- I... when I look back at my childhood I only remember the bad parts. I know there were good times but the most defining part was the fact that my parents weren't around much. Dad was... well, he never changed the way I think my mother wanted him to. They were both away a lot, and then they sent me away. I hated them for it."
She looks at him for a moment before she takes his hand. "I'm so sorry," she places her second hand on top, looking into his eyes. She understand him, and she feels horrible for him. Perhaps the lack of attention played a part in his eventual turn. There was always love, of course, she has no doubt that Han and Leia loves - most likely still love - their son, but maybe he just needed more.
"It's okay."
"No. No it's isn't. You- you were just a child. Trust me when I say I know how lonely it gets when you're forced out of your home. At least I had my brother, you had no one. I can't imagine what that was like."
He chews on his lip, thinking her situation was always worse than hers. But she stayed strong throughout hers and she came out the other side better, he gave in and now he hates who he is. "I wasn't ever alone, not really. But it felt lonely. I didn't want to go with Luke, I wanted to be with my parents."
"And that's valid. Your feelings were not wrong just because you had people around you. You were let down by your uncle. He gave up on you when you needed someone to pull you back to the light the most..." she trails off, picking at her fingernails, eyes lost in the small flame of the candle just in front of her.
"How do you know?"
She meets his eyes. "I've seen it, what happened that night. Just flashes, but I know the chain of events and I understand why you did what you did."
His expression softens, the corners of his lips curling up into half a smile. Her hands are still wrapped around his and he tightens the hold. Somehow, it all makes sense again, his love for her never faded but he remembers once again just exactly why he so easily fell in love with someone when he didn't think he could even feel.
He loves her more than anything in the world. He could give it all up, right here, right now, if only she asked it of him. Only she would never do it, because her feelings are the same. She is ready to leave everything behind, every memory, every inch of her that's holding onto her past, she's ready to give it all up to stand beside him against the world.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
[ words 2598 ]
I said I was gonna update last weekend but y'all have heard nothing but crickets from me and I'm sorry lmao but I haven't been able to finish this damned chapter. BUT here it is and things should be running smoothly from now on. Updates once a week from now on, THAT I can assure you. 💕