Selfishness in Silence

Cure the Itch

A/N: Based after The Last Jedi.

It's been seven months, twenty-three days, twelve hours and eleven minutes.

Should it be shocking to anyone that she remembers their parting in such stark clarity? That final weighted look in his doleful dark eyes. The slumped posture of his shoulders and his mouth drawn low at the edges, the frown he wore bringing acid to the back of her throat.

Why? Why did he choose this way?

She glances up at her reflection in the small mirror beside her bunk. It's late. Again. The bruised circles cradling her eyes have not abated for weeks, but no one questions them, nor the redness in her gaze. Sleep would come easier without the dreams, the voices. The failures.

He hates her for her betrayal, but he betrayed her, too. Failure. She rubs irritably a her face, pressing her palms cruelly into her eye-sockets. Colors bloom and swirl behind her eyelids, grim, sickly shades of green and violet. Supernovas, screaming faces, gaping mouths.

Why?

She pulls at her hair, a frustrated growl tearing from her throat and filling the empty room. The bond has been silent, as undisturbed and peaceful as death. Is he close to finding them? Does he think of her? Does he hate the silence more than she does? She opens her eyes, finding her attention drawn back to the mirror.

In the quiet moments on Jakku, she wondered who'd given her her eyes. Her mother, or her father? Unwanted tears sting with their greeting, obnoxious and unwelcome. She viciously smears them away. None of it matters now, she bites her tongue disdainfully. He'd forced her to admit the truth and it still hurts. The lie was easier, safer. She'd done it to survive, to continue on... hoping.

For so many years silence never grieved her. The marks on the wall, the dull scrape tallying another day as she waited for them. This had been her melody, a song dedicated to ghosts who didn't give a damn about her. Then, fate swept her away into a never-ending abyss, a war too big for her small world, and his sound filled her existence. She yearns to hate him for it, but that is impossible now. Perhaps, it always was.

So quiet.

She never expected that after... everything -- the absence of his sound. She's sure her efforts to block him out had worked, but she never anticipated his equally deliberate silence. It burdens her mind as if a millstone round her neck dragging her down into murky depths, dangerous and festered with hungry things. They feast upon her thoughts, poisoning her mind with despair, with doubt.

The others had noted her abnormal quietness, Finn especially, but no one commented on it. Hiding away from the First Order and its new supreme leader dominates the center of everyone's attention these days. Rose, who Rey has come to appreciate beyond measure, has thankfully never asked her many questions about her past. With Finn, their lack of conversation never lacks in comfort and, though sometimes forced, Finn's tender smile is a welcome sight.

She sighs and falls back onto her pillow, chewing fretfully at her nails. It hasn't always been quiet. No...

It started a month ago, one night when she and Finn had dozed off in the Falcon cockpit, a deafening roar, the shout practically vibrating her skull and jarring her from her sleep. She'd immediately felt him prowling in his quarters, muttering to himself aloud, though howling like a madman in his mind. His rage was liquid fire, melting through her barriers and settling into her chest, burning all else away.

Then, she saw him, clear and sharp in the cold light. He turned abruptly, fists shaking in a wild frenzy, and he moved on her in two strides towering above her as a shadow blocking out the world. She looked up at him, unwilling to avert her eyes or to fight him.