in the gutter, looking at the stars.

He reminds her of the Force Worshippers in Tuanul, and she feels that same reflexive urge to shrug him off as ridiculous and cloud-headed. Except: the Force has been proved to be real, hasn't it? She's felt it singing under her skin and through her veins. She used it to call Luke's lightsaber to her own hand.

He'd used it to mine her thoughts for information she hadn't fully known she'd had. To lock her into paralysis and then dreams.

Still, a worshipper would be so lost in their own faith that they could convince themselves of anything, even killing family.

But no, she doesn't believe it.

It doesn't matter: before she can organize her thoughts to properly rebuke his claims that Han would have sacrificed himself for someone so lost, he throws a wrench so expertly aimed it takes her out at the ankle and leaves her sprawling on the hard ground.

"What —" It made no sense; it made perfect sense. She hadn't given much thought to who the shirt had belonged to, other than assuming it had been something of Han's years ago, or some other passer through he'd scammed. The shock and revulsion of the realization crosses her face but she doesn't move to take it off.

It's really comfortable. And it isn't his anymore.

Scavengers keepers.

If she ever pulls Solo’s wool from her eyes. 

“Keep it,” he smiles, nodding toward her knitted fists. Her thoughts. “It suits you.” 

And the smile is monstrous in its subtlety. Monstrous upon arrival. Monstrous as it settles on his face, monstrous in and of itself. 

Monstrous because it is genuine. 

The water lapping at her calf-parts. And finds affection in the idea that she could have opened his eyes ... and knowing all the ache that comes with that. This half of her softens.

❛ I did not think you saw ... ❜

Her voice yanks back several notches as if someone plucked it from her throat. As if recognizing, that she had plucked something from him. Even if she had not meant to.

“Yes,” he sneers, his gaze unrelenting. “I see it.” 

Until it relents, easing its hold on her like a hand from around a throat. A white thing, bruised mother-of-pearl. 

“I see you. Your suffering.”

Ren feels it. Hara’s loneliness. It is almost as vast as the sea he has thrown himself into. Perhaps he might throw himself into the ocean that is Hara as well—not to drown her, nor to be drowned. Simply to feel the plunge, the meeting of bodies. 

He should tear through her with his saber. He almost kneels. 

“What would you have me do?”

The loss of control over her autonomy, the injuries sustained to her pride, all stemming from simply encountering one another. It was infuriating. Anger had always escaped her in unexpected ways. Now it cried out for her to unclench her jaw.

The emotion had long since curled itself into a tight coil beneath her sternum, even before she had been hunted down by Ren's kind. It had been festering since her father's exit, entrenching further as she failed the expectations set for her by the broken family that was left. The fury, at times, threatened to make her as much of a menace as the monsters she feared with the violence it could evoke from her.

It was little comfort to know that things could be worse, that Ren could be much crueler. The half-blood would never be rid of him as long as she lived. And for all she knew, that could be a very long time.

Expression softened at the letter that was offered along with the day's payment. Confusion knitted her brows and caused her lips to pout as she carefully extracted the thick stock from the Lord's grasp, pointedly avoiding his skin as she did so.

"Why would my name be on- never you mind. It can wait until tomorrow," she mumbled, raising her free hand to stifle a yawn as she spoke.

Stuffing the bills into her pocket, she turned and made her way out of the room and through the manor towards the front door without another word, tearing into the envelope as she went and quickly scanning its contents.

'You are to bring along your newly acquired thespian that you keep hidden away in your gardens. No exceptions. - Madame Phasma'

--

The end of the next workday found Mason outside of the greenhouse, dirt encrusted fingers impatiently tapping against her already smeared sweater. The lady slippers were nearly as demanding as Ren. Several golden strands had snaked free from her long braid, gaze bouncing between the back door of the manor and the darkening skyline.

I have a proposition for you. It hadn't been difficult for her to guess what it was, yet the idea felt more painful than being fed on in some ways. The pads of her fingers dug into the fabric as they flexed unconsciously.

She craved a cigarette. No such relief was to be found within her pockets. They were bare save for Phasma's invitation, now wrinkled at the edges from being reread a dozen times over through the night.

As the door opened and revealed a dark figure, the half-blood scowled. Withdrawing the letter from her pocket, she shook the paper in his direction. The sound of crinkling paper broke the stilled silence of the night. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.

Darkness lingered here as it lingered everywhere in Corvax Fen, but it was a cultivated darkness, softened by crimson lamps whose shaded glow proved just sufficient for delicate leaves and for creatures who preferred never to meet the sun.

He stood before a graceful walnut chair with sinuous carved arms, and a broad worktable crowded with calipers, hand lenses, botanical knives, half-labeled specimens, and stacks of notes. 

The head maid was clearing a dusky, dirty corner, filling a sack of refuse with shattered glass fangs when Mason burst through the door and bolted upright with a gasp. 

"Miss—!"

Ren waved her away with a vague air of amusement—even fondness—and returned to the plant.

"Madame Phasma?" He turned one fern frond between his fingers. "She's interested in you. Can you blame her?"

Ren looked up and considered Mason.

"Hand me that lens."

Mason nearly threw it at him. Even as she retracted her trembling hand, he caught a whiff of her rage and incredulity. But also the scent of lady slippers, the fabric she'd dug her fingers into, as he raised the hand lens to the vertebrae of a fern frond. 

"You may decline the invitation, of course." Ren's profile bent over a broad Wardian case, the fern's jointed spine. "But I wonder if there is something you might enjoy in exchange for going. That often seems to settle matters."

"You could stop it. If you wanted," but even as she says it, she knows it isn't wholly true. Her knowledge of the galaxy outside of Jakku is still lacking, but even she can't deny it's far bigger than a man, no matter how much he tries to stretch his shadow out.

“No,” he answers, eyes lowering into the space where her hand had been. “It can't be outrun.”

“My parents faced it,” Ren murmurs.

And war remained, curdling in the galaxy, swallowing his family like a black hole, ossifying the small stars in his synapses and his heart, distorting them beyond recognition.

“You have to face it, too.” He holds out his hand all the same, a shy, pale animal in the shadows. “We have to face it.”

Arched ears flushed a soft pink at the offer. Truthfully, the color would have deepened if the half-blood weren't so drained. A refuge was no small thing.

Honey colored eyes darted back to Ren's features, her expression, for a few brief moments, wholly unguarded. A rare occurrence. Then, a wry, weak smile unfolded across paled lips.

"That could extend much longer than you think and you said it yourself, I've become quite troublesome," Mason jested, silently willing the blush to fade from her ears. It wasn't so simple in her current state.

Her sickly features shifted to concern when blood began to drip from the Lord's lashes. As he turned away, the half-blood arched her neck and shoulder so she could track him through the room.

"Did you not go to ground today?" she asked in a murmur. That couldn't be right, though. He would've already been bleeding. Something must have kept him up for part of the day.

The past eighteen or so hours had gone by in a blur on the fairy's end. It had taken a while for the adrenaline to wear off and she hadn't fully fallen asleep until after dawn. Only getting up once for food and water, in the gloom of the darkened manor, had done nothing to aid her grogginess.

Fatigue edges the words. Ren tips his temple, turning his profile toward Mason, communicating the gravity of that statement, the weight of soil upon the bones. 

"They..." 

Then his eyes fall on her neck, and he closes them swiftly, as if to shield himself. More blood trickles down the slope of a marble cheek. 

"It's nothing," he mutters, grabbing his grave jacket and stealing to the door. "Think nothing of it. All will be well." 

And like the night, he is gone. The moment he drops, day bounds in, all flurry and in a rush to get on. A nurse and three chambermaids, borrowed from Lady Phasma, fly in and out of Mason's refuge like magpies, clucking and fussing about, their white bonnet ribbons and dark underskirts trembling as they tend the faerie, murmuring: how warm she feels, how flushed she is. 

Their hands find her gently. Aprons brush the bedposts, and they carry Mason off to a fine old room polished and fit for daylight, walnut and honeyed oak gleaming through the thrown-open, well-kempt leaded windows. The chambermaids wash and tend Mason as faithfully as they have tended her rooms. She smells of flowers, they whisper. 

Ren goes to ground in the smell of flowers, still grasping at the jacket, foul as a corpse, and does not emerge from that chamber of blood and dirt for several days.

So when they were starting to feel an odd kind of feeling in this location, the entity did feel a certain obligation to at least listen to the impulse even if not entirely pursued.

"Heh. Right. I guess the dogs might have seen something, sensed something that might otherwise.. not get noticed. Might be beneath.. somewhere in this area. " There's always so many layers to places, who knows what could be lurking beneath it all.

The notion of leaving after another night, Atieno pauses for a moment - the notion of traveling with someone feeling almost a bit novel for a moment.

"Hm."

The dogs hadn't budged. One scratched lazily behind its ear. Another let out a thin little whine before settling again, every muzzle still turned toward the water where the tide dulled beneath the evening. Ben moved toward the truck waiting above the dunes.

"'Bout a day's drive to the next town."

Looking back toward the marsh where the dogs still kept their quiet vigil, he asked,

Is it just because you ran into me? she wants to ask, demand, attack, but she's smart enough, self aware enough, to know she doesn't want to know the answer. That there is no right answer, especially not with the way she's feeling already.

He twists them around but he isn't getting out of it that easily — no one does, so why should he? He isn't better than anyone else in this building — and she uses her legs already straddling his thighs to lift just a little higher and trap him between them, ankles hooking behind him so he can't leave her without taking her with him.

And then he kisses her, and something burns in her ribcage. There's a reality where it soothes her sharper edges; in this reality it cuts her on them.

And she lets him go.

And she watches him through cat-hooded eyes, trying to piece together what the fuck just happened.

And he couldn’t tell Selina about this, could he? That a couple of Gotham's gilded sons—the Falcones, the Kanes—had yoinked him by the collar, that Selina had yoinked him by the collar.

Instead, he stands with one palm on the door, free fingers worrying the rumpled seam at his collarbone, while the room lists half a degree beneath him. 

“I shouldn’t be.”