"I did?" He sounds genuinely confused for a second, but somehow he feels loved, cherished, desired. There's still confusion in there, and some pain, but mostly it's just calm.
"I did," he then decides, eyes still closed tight against the darkness outside. At least this is a darkness he chose. "You-- ate the bloody jerky."
Despite everything, that makes her smile a little. Out of everything he could latch onto, it's her eating the jerky he had wanted her to give to the horse.
"I'd do it again, too." She says, and her hand is absently smoothing down the back of his head, the stubble there is catching on her fingers but she hardly cares when he's coming out of this and she just feels relieved. She's never felt the impulse to care for someone like this, to want to protect them, but now it isn't going away.
She wants to do everything she can for him, and if that includes staying exactly like they are right now until the lights come back she's going to do it.
"Gotta--" He shivers, hiccups a little sob before he can try again. That hand on his head feels so good, and he tries very hard to relax into whatever it is that's happening that is letting him feel relief. And there's care, again: more care than he's felt in a long time.
"Gotta save it for r-rations, now," he finally manages. His chest still feels tight, painful, and in his head he can still hear the shovels. But she's giving him something else to think about.
She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from saying Oh, Tommy when she hears his voice crack, and there's a fresh wave of concern that she still can't make any sense of. She was never in love with him but that doesn't mean she likes this at all, she wishes she could stop it, that she could take her lightsaber and cut the walls down and get them out, but it won't work. All they can do is wait.
If she ever gets the chance to, she's going to beat the Admiral bloody for this. For Tommy, for her, for the entire barge.
"I know, I've been careful." She murmurs, and it feels odd and not at the same time to pitch her voice so it's soothing and gentle. "I've got a whole stockpile now, we'll be set in the Falcon."
"I scared you," he whispers, still keeping her close, letting her presence be the thing that grounds him when there's nothing else. There's anger coming from her, concern, a hint of violence- he can feel it like he's looking at her face.
For some reason, that makes her move her hand from his, stops pressing it to her face so she can put her arm back around him and hold him again.
"That's alright," she says at once, because it is, it doesn't matter, if anything him scaring her is probably the least important thing that's happened in here today. She's forgotten being hungry, being afraid of there not being any food, being worried about her friends outside this room. All there is right now is Tommy, keeping him with her and talking to her instead of listening to whatever he had been hearing before.
He's silent for a while, while he gets his breath back, while he tries to alleviate the pressure on his chest. He probably-- he knows he should, he should let go of her, give her back her space. But there is no space, here, it's a tiny, dark box that can barely hold the two of them. And right now, he feels like the only thing anchoring him is that embrace, her presence, her words.
He lets the silence linger as he things, and then finally speaks up again. "There was a war, in my world," he starts.
While he's quiet she just holds him, hands stroking up and down his back and the back of his head, and the only thing he'll pick up from her now is the unwavering sense of rightness. She's more than happy to do this for him, she's touched he's letting, and she's honestly a little glad to know she can do this. That it's in her, somewhere, and even though she had to call on the knowledge of someone she never was to get this far she's there now. Hopefully, that will never go away.
When he starts to explain she stays quiet, but her arms go a little tighter around him, protectively. She'll let him work through it on his own time, and as long as she refuses to let go of him she hopes it'll make telling this story easier.
"I forged a birth certificate," he starts, because that's easier to talk about. He presses his nose into the crook of her neck for a second before catching himself. It's just that getting closer to her feels like getting closer to the comfort, to the soft emotions that she's giving off.
"Didn't have one, before. But I wanted to fight for my country, so me and my brothers forged birth certificates and signed up."
She doesn't mind it, she finds, when she feels the brush of his nose and the puff of his breath against her neck. In another situation it might make her blush or think too hard about what that means, but he had just been crying. He might still be crying, and if he wants to press his face into her neck for whatever reason she's going to let him.
She can put together a little better where this is going, now. He'd gone to war too young, too hopeful, and whatever happen had beaten that out of him. She bites her lip and holds him tighter still, like if she just keeps him as close to her as she can she can soak up all his pain and sorrow.
She's never wanted to do that for anyone before. The fact that she does now leaves her feeling a little awed, because it's honestly something she didn't know she was capable of.
"I started in the yeomanry," he says, sounding a little more distant, now: he feels it, with his eyes closed and her comfort washing over him- there's hints of other things, awe and surprise and understanding. But mostly it's care, soft and gentle.
"You put a load of gypsy lads on horses and they'll fight for that horse harder than they'll fight for themselves, right?"
He sighs, softly, shifts his head so his forehead is just resting on her shoulder. He can still feel the panic in his belly, can feel tears threatening, but he can keep them at bay for now.
"This war... it was static. New weapons, bigger armies. We went to a different country and dug ourselves into trenches and we wouldn't move for weeks. We'd lose men by the dozens, but we wouldn't move."
Rey has to wonder if he's ever told this story before like this, honest and all at once. The people in the world he came from would know all this, know what he went through, and his brothers would have obviously been there with him. How common is this knowledge?
She can't be the first one he's told. She's still determined to keep her mouth shut and let him talk at his own pace, still rubbing his back. The story is getting to the part that she can tell is going to worry her most, probably be the hardest to tell, so she shifts a little up onto her knees with no care for how uncomfortable it is. She can align them better like that, slot against him more completely.
She isn't speaking, but everything about her body language and her mind is screaming comfort, that he can do this, that he's going to be okay.
"Eventually, they figured- if it isn't working on the ground, we have to add something new. They gave bombs to the boys in the aeroplanes, who were doing recon before. Now they were killing people yards below them."
He shivers, swallows against the lump in his throat. He has told this story before, and he'd been fine then. But he hadn't just had a panic attack then, he hadn't been locked in a small, dark space then.
And that's why he can't stand being here, in the dark and trapped. It makes perfect sense and Rey sighs softly and is so, so glad that he isn't doing this alone. She doesn't want him trapped at all, but she's painfully glad that if it had to happen she was here with him.
He can't even think of doing this alone. He would have gotten out a wreck, completely and utterly, he's fairy sure of it.
But he isn't alone. She's there with him, with her arms around him and her understanding washing over him as he speaks. It makes it easier to go on, to continue the story so she really understands. Because she had needed someone to know what her life had been like: he needs her to understand this part of him. That war shaped him into the man he is now.
"We'd go yards and yards. We dug tunnels underneath the battlefield, up to the Germans' territory, to try and blow up as many of them as we could. We walked in stocking feet and spoke in whispers. If we..." He sucks in a deep breath, tightens his arms around her for a second.
"If we miscalculated, we'd end up in one of their tunnels. We were always- always afraid of the other side of that earthen wall."
She's not really sure why she does it, isn't even all that conscious of making the decision, but when she feels him pull in that shuddering breath a memory from the breach floods up and she turns her head just a little to the side to press a gentle kiss to his temple.
It's over fast, and it's something that will be so easy to ignore, just like his nose on her neck, if they choose to. It doesn't mean anything unless it does, and she won't want to take it back once she thinks back on this and realizes what she did.
This story is just so hard for him to tell, the place they're in, the place his mind is at, it's too much. So she adds a kiss, chaste as anything, to the back rubbing and the way she runs her hand up and down the back of his head.
It isn't easy to ignore. Not at all. Her lips are like a burn mark on his skin, warm and rough from dehydration, and the way she's been touching him before this just heightens that sensation.
He remembers this. He remembers it from another life, where he pulled her into his quarters, where he snuck out with her for rides in the woods; he remembers it from his past, where his mother would comfort him like this; he remembers it from one night with a woman who made his heart soar before she made it plummet deeper than he thought possible.
Right now, vulnerable like this, it doesn't make him angry. It doesn't make him clam up. It tears a sob from his throat, that unending tenderness, the depth of her care for him (for him, why for him when there are so many people on this boat who deserve it more?), and he pulls in two, three desperate breaths.
"Oh, Tommy," she whispers, and she's never heard her own voice sound like that before. Thick with emotion, a little broken, all because she wants nothing more than to make this right and she has no idea how.
She'd been quiet for so long and that's all the sound she makes because she's too busy wrapping both arms around him now to say anything else. There's nothing help she has to say, and her body just instinctively starts to rock them back and forth, she's doing everything she can and it doesn't seem like enough but it has to be worth more than anything she could think to say.
He doesn't need pity- she didn't need it for her lifetime of loneliness, and he doesn't need it for the pats of himself the war crushed. He can feel her worry now, tinged with desperation at not being able to help him- he thinks that's it. He honestly believes it's her, right now, that it's her he's feeling, and that distracts him enough from his own sorrow.
He tries to patch it up. He does something, clumsily, trying to soothe her without doing anything physical. His fingers do knit in her clothing as she starts rocking him, and he pulls in a sharp breath, trying to keep going.
"It happened, one day. They broke through. I thought I'd known fear before that, I thought I'd understood- but I didn't until one of them drove his bayonet through my shoulder, until they shot my mate--"
She would have been fine, once she had the time to process this more. Whatever he's doing is unnecessary and she hardly notices it as much more than the ache in her heart easing, but all that does is let her pour more of herself into showering him with...
With love. That's what this is, there's no denying that. She knows what it feels like thanks to the breach, and now that she has a name for it she can apply it to Chewbacca, and the Han she knew, and even BB-8 and Finn. She can give all of that a name, but it's just different enough when it's Tommy that she knows it means just a little more when she holds him like this. She isn't in love with him and that's honestly a little more comforting than she'd have ever thought possible, but he's on a different level. One that makes little sense in the moment.
One that does not matter at all when he's talking about war and his friends dying. She could have guessed the story would take this turn, but that doesn't make it any better.
It's overwhelming. He feels like he's fighting against something inside of him, something that wants to devour him, and she's just not letting that happen. She's holding him close and she's pouring something into him that he feels with Furiosa, that he felt with Lark when he was going off the opium, that he feels for Nux.
It's absolutely overwhelming, and it makes him fall silent again, makes him hitch in short little breaths. "We got out," he forces out, through clenched teeth, through the threat of tears. "We blew them up. It's a big fucking crater now, that place. We b-blew them right up, but I still--"
She can't help the wash of sheer gratitude that comes with knowing there's a big crater somewhere in his world to mark this, that he got himself out and that the people who hurt him are, hopefully, very dead.
Times like this are when she struggles with the balance of the Light side and the Dark, and she knows it, but she's glad his enemies are dead all the same. Not being a real Jedi has become a crutch of sorts to allow these kinds of feelings, but it's something she can't feel bad about. She'd rather be human and feeling her feelings, even knew and overwhelming ones like this, than a perfect Jedi.
And she knows, or she thinks she knows, how that sentence he can't finish ends. They blew them up, but he didn't get out completely. Sometimes, like now, he's still there. She can identify the same thing in herself, that hopeless feeling of fighting for so long to stay alive and wait for her family on Jakku, finally letting them go and trying to move on, only to feel like she's trapped right where she started. So much struggle, so much time passed, and still he can hear the noises from the tunnel.
"I know, Tommy," she murmurs against his hair, and she doesn't kiss him there but that doesn't really matter. The feeling is still there, hasn't faded. May never fade.
He nods, helplessly. He can feel that she knows, that she understands him. He doesn't need to finish that sentence for him to know that he's been heard, and forgiven for this outburst.
He lets her murmur into his hair, lets her hold him just like that, and slowly he starts calming down. Very slowly, he starts coming back to himself enough that his knuckles are no longer white where he's holding onto her, enough to feel like he can speak about this and no longer fear going back there.
It takes him long, long minutes before he can talk again. But when he does, it's in a soft murmur, against her shoulder: "Thank you."
The entire time, it's more of what she's been giving him since she first put her hands on him because she didn't know what else to do. Holding him, accepting him, letting him take what strength he could from her and not for one second wanting to ask him to stop.
When he thanks her it doesn't sit quite right, she doesn't want to be thanked for what she's done for him, but all the same she nods too. If he needs to thank her she can accept that as well.
"You helped me too," she points out, because she won't forget him standing beside her while she explained Jakku for the rest of her life. It's not about saying they're even now, but it's good to know they aren't unbalanced. He was there for her, she's here for him.
Still. She isn't going to be the first one to pull away.
"It doesn't happen often anymore," he says, like he wants to reassure her-- he's not as much of a wreck as he used to be, really, he isn't. He's getting over it. He works daily on leaving the war behind him.
He won't pull away if she doesn't. There isn't much place for it, and it's still comforting. He still needs it, somehow.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 08:47 pm (UTC)"I did," he then decides, eyes still closed tight against the darkness outside. At least this is a darkness he chose. "You-- ate the bloody jerky."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 08:54 pm (UTC)"I'd do it again, too." She says, and her hand is absently smoothing down the back of his head, the stubble there is catching on her fingers but she hardly cares when he's coming out of this and she just feels relieved. She's never felt the impulse to care for someone like this, to want to protect them, but now it isn't going away.
She wants to do everything she can for him, and if that includes staying exactly like they are right now until the lights come back she's going to do it.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 09:46 pm (UTC)"Gotta save it for r-rations, now," he finally manages. His chest still feels tight, painful, and in his head he can still hear the shovels. But she's giving him something else to think about.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 09:55 pm (UTC)If she ever gets the chance to, she's going to beat the Admiral bloody for this. For Tommy, for her, for the entire barge.
"I know, I've been careful." She murmurs, and it feels odd and not at the same time to pitch her voice so it's soothing and gentle. "I've got a whole stockpile now, we'll be set in the Falcon."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 10:08 pm (UTC)"That's alright," she says at once, because it is, it doesn't matter, if anything him scaring her is probably the least important thing that's happened in here today. She's forgotten being hungry, being afraid of there not being any food, being worried about her friends outside this room. All there is right now is Tommy, keeping him with her and talking to her instead of listening to whatever he had been hearing before.
"I'm alright now, I promise."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 10:16 pm (UTC)He lets the silence linger as he things, and then finally speaks up again. "There was a war, in my world," he starts.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-14 10:24 pm (UTC)When he starts to explain she stays quiet, but her arms go a little tighter around him, protectively. She'll let him work through it on his own time, and as long as she refuses to let go of him she hopes it'll make telling this story easier.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:00 am (UTC)"Didn't have one, before. But I wanted to fight for my country, so me and my brothers forged birth certificates and signed up."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:09 am (UTC)She can put together a little better where this is going, now. He'd gone to war too young, too hopeful, and whatever happen had beaten that out of him. She bites her lip and holds him tighter still, like if she just keeps him as close to her as she can she can soak up all his pain and sorrow.
She's never wanted to do that for anyone before. The fact that she does now leaves her feeling a little awed, because it's honestly something she didn't know she was capable of.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:17 am (UTC)"You put a load of gypsy lads on horses and they'll fight for that horse harder than they'll fight for themselves, right?"
He sighs, softly, shifts his head so his forehead is just resting on her shoulder. He can still feel the panic in his belly, can feel tears threatening, but he can keep them at bay for now.
"This war... it was static. New weapons, bigger armies. We went to a different country and dug ourselves into trenches and we wouldn't move for weeks. We'd lose men by the dozens, but we wouldn't move."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:35 am (UTC)She can't be the first one he's told. She's still determined to keep her mouth shut and let him talk at his own pace, still rubbing his back. The story is getting to the part that she can tell is going to worry her most, probably be the hardest to tell, so she shifts a little up onto her knees with no care for how uncomfortable it is. She can align them better like that, slot against him more completely.
She isn't speaking, but everything about her body language and her mind is screaming comfort, that he can do this, that he's going to be okay.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:39 am (UTC)He shivers, swallows against the lump in his throat. He has told this story before, and he'd been fine then. But he hadn't just had a panic attack then, he hadn't been locked in a small, dark space then.
"And they sent others underground."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 07:51 am (UTC)But he isn't alone. She's there with him, with her arms around him and her understanding washing over him as he speaks. It makes it easier to go on, to continue the story so she really understands. Because she had needed someone to know what her life had been like: he needs her to understand this part of him. That war shaped him into the man he is now.
"We'd go yards and yards. We dug tunnels underneath the battlefield, up to the Germans' territory, to try and blow up as many of them as we could. We walked in stocking feet and spoke in whispers. If we..." He sucks in a deep breath, tightens his arms around her for a second.
"If we miscalculated, we'd end up in one of their tunnels. We were always- always afraid of the other side of that earthen wall."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:02 am (UTC)It's over fast, and it's something that will be so easy to ignore, just like his nose on her neck, if they choose to. It doesn't mean anything unless it does, and she won't want to take it back once she thinks back on this and realizes what she did.
This story is just so hard for him to tell, the place they're in, the place his mind is at, it's too much. So she adds a kiss, chaste as anything, to the back rubbing and the way she runs her hand up and down the back of his head.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:11 am (UTC)He remembers this. He remembers it from another life, where he pulled her into his quarters, where he snuck out with her for rides in the woods; he remembers it from his past, where his mother would comfort him like this; he remembers it from one night with a woman who made his heart soar before she made it plummet deeper than he thought possible.
Right now, vulnerable like this, it doesn't make him angry. It doesn't make him clam up. It tears a sob from his throat, that unending tenderness, the depth of her care for him (for him, why for him when there are so many people on this boat who deserve it more?), and he pulls in two, three desperate breaths.
He can't continue right now. Not yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:22 am (UTC)She'd been quiet for so long and that's all the sound she makes because she's too busy wrapping both arms around him now to say anything else. There's nothing help she has to say, and her body just instinctively starts to rock them back and forth, she's doing everything she can and it doesn't seem like enough but it has to be worth more than anything she could think to say.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:29 am (UTC)He tries to patch it up. He does something, clumsily, trying to soothe her without doing anything physical. His fingers do knit in her clothing as she starts rocking him, and he pulls in a sharp breath, trying to keep going.
"It happened, one day. They broke through. I thought I'd known fear before that, I thought I'd understood- but I didn't until one of them drove his bayonet through my shoulder, until they shot my mate--"
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:45 am (UTC)With love. That's what this is, there's no denying that. She knows what it feels like thanks to the breach, and now that she has a name for it she can apply it to Chewbacca, and the Han she knew, and even BB-8 and Finn. She can give all of that a name, but it's just different enough when it's Tommy that she knows it means just a little more when she holds him like this. She isn't in love with him and that's honestly a little more comforting than she'd have ever thought possible, but he's on a different level. One that makes little sense in the moment.
One that does not matter at all when he's talking about war and his friends dying. She could have guessed the story would take this turn, but that doesn't make it any better.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 08:50 am (UTC)It's absolutely overwhelming, and it makes him fall silent again, makes him hitch in short little breaths. "We got out," he forces out, through clenched teeth, through the threat of tears. "We blew them up. It's a big fucking crater now, that place. We b-blew them right up, but I still--"
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 09:00 am (UTC)Times like this are when she struggles with the balance of the Light side and the Dark, and she knows it, but she's glad his enemies are dead all the same. Not being a real Jedi has become a crutch of sorts to allow these kinds of feelings, but it's something she can't feel bad about. She'd rather be human and feeling her feelings, even knew and overwhelming ones like this, than a perfect Jedi.
And she knows, or she thinks she knows, how that sentence he can't finish ends. They blew them up, but he didn't get out completely. Sometimes, like now, he's still there. She can identify the same thing in herself, that hopeless feeling of fighting for so long to stay alive and wait for her family on Jakku, finally letting them go and trying to move on, only to feel like she's trapped right where she started. So much struggle, so much time passed, and still he can hear the noises from the tunnel.
"I know, Tommy," she murmurs against his hair, and she doesn't kiss him there but that doesn't really matter. The feeling is still there, hasn't faded. May never fade.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 09:11 am (UTC)He lets her murmur into his hair, lets her hold him just like that, and slowly he starts calming down. Very slowly, he starts coming back to himself enough that his knuckles are no longer white where he's holding onto her, enough to feel like he can speak about this and no longer fear going back there.
It takes him long, long minutes before he can talk again. But when he does, it's in a soft murmur, against her shoulder: "Thank you."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 09:18 am (UTC)When he thanks her it doesn't sit quite right, she doesn't want to be thanked for what she's done for him, but all the same she nods too. If he needs to thank her she can accept that as well.
"You helped me too," she points out, because she won't forget him standing beside her while she explained Jakku for the rest of her life. It's not about saying they're even now, but it's good to know they aren't unbalanced. He was there for her, she's here for him.
Still. She isn't going to be the first one to pull away.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-15 09:21 am (UTC)He won't pull away if she doesn't. There isn't much place for it, and it's still comforting. He still needs it, somehow.
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