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i.
Rey hands are wrapped around the steering wheel for hours and when she grabs the rusty stick shift her hands lightly touch the outside of his black jeans covered leg. Too long to fit entirely in the small car. Both agree in a silent pact to ignore this fact.
“We’d better stop.” He says at some point north of Virginia.
“It’s still day,” She reply and sort of points awkwardly at the crumpled map on Ben’s lap where a red “x” cuts the blue and black lines, “And we didn’t even get halfway.”
“You need to rest, I can drive.” The last part is added almost hesitantly. She swallows hard. They both know Ben would prefer to hold embers to touch the car, the mere act of sitting there already evoked a sense of desecration, of corruption.
“Theres is no need, I’m fine.” Her voice is rough and broken, the last flask of water had ended 10 miles away and was now lying in the small plastic cemetery of empty bottles at the backseat.
“I can go on, just a little bit.”
Rey spares, even when she had been sleepless since the last stop. At a forgotten city by the side of the main highway. Maybe three? Four days prior? It was hard to keep track on time when all you have where neon signs and badly placed signs along the freeway.
They’d both have got rid of their cell phones after leaving away Arch-To, only to realize that none of them carry a watch later when a sea of scorching asphalt already existed between them and any nearby electronic store. Finn would had a word for it. Tragicomic. Finn would always had the righ word for everything, sometimes she wondered how her friend woult act in this situation. Probably he would never be in her place. Finn had always been good at understand the ground he was placing.
It’s dangerous to continue.“ Ben’s final argument sounded almost like a plea. Rey tries not to think about that. She has not yet learned to deal with or understand this new aspect of him, the one who cares. Rey didn’t have enough time to. That’s why she choices the know route.
"Well, that’s a natural consequence of being hunted by the two sides.” She add mockingly.
Ben left escapes a chuckle of incredulity. Rey isn’t used to that sound either.
ii.
They get lost somewhere south of Lincoln Highway. It’s a not sayed agreement that Rey drives and Ben says the directions. The Falcon it’s a old soldier from a time where GPS was just a sci-fi ilusion, so they managed to make the classic “read the maps, turn left of that sign, navigates to the sound of my words” works until of course, Ben fuck it up.
“I can believe you’re that useless.” She blames and scream at him. It’s not a pretty thing. None of their fights usually are.
“I was following the map, it’s not my fault this thing is from another century.”
She gonna reply, the right words are at the back of her tongue like ivory and flames. Even when she knows he’s right, the map have yellow borders and scars of oxidation. Rey herself have picke it up from Luke’s library when the hell had break loose. She doesn’t like to be remembered of that.
“If you haven’t been playing around with the radio buttons you could at least see the road signs.”
“It could catch something.” Ben replies.
“It’s been just static for four hours! It’s not going to catch anything.”
“Well, it’s not like run would solver our problems. All we have are these marks in a decreptic paper, it could lead us to damnation for all we know.”
“What then? You have expected me to have this all sorted out? I didn’t ask for any of this!” She cries breathless.
Ben stares at her startled. The unspoken words hang heavy as steel between them. I didn’t ask you to come back. I didn’t ask you to save me.
“Rey-”
Her own throat suddenly seems to small for breath. She doesn’t trust herself to say any more aloud. Because she knows it’s to easy hurt in the little things, when the big ones will break the both of you apart.
“I’m going for a walk.”
She open the door and he doesn’t try to stop her. Rey is glad for that. She walks into nowhere, the soles of her Chuck Taylor raising furious clouds of hot dust into her sallow socks. When she finally look back Ben just stands by, a faded silhouette in the dim pale light of the car.
iii.
Ben buys a second hand cell phone in a charity bazaar behind a church. It’s his way of saying sorry and Rey accept with a nod. The phone is a gray rectangular plastic thing with monochrome screen, but the chip still works.
Rey writes a quick message to the number Ben had scribbled at the bottom of the map.
“We’re safe, probably getting there next week.” She writes and deletes the same message about a thousand times, before pressing the “send” button.
The truth is they don’t know who could be there. It was a safe line, but could lead to anyone or nothing. And the thing is Rey have been waiting her whole life. Looking back forever, she can not allowed herself to fall into that circle again.
Ben at her side is smiling. She glares at him in disbelief.
“We are like childs. Playing some kind of cosmic chinese whispers.” Ben explains sheepish.
“I thought you were going to take on the role of byronic redeemed hero.”
“You can take the act if it is a must.” He snaps back.
“I pass. Black just ins’t my colour.”
The sign on the road is a faint wave, lost between mountains and rocks. It takes hours to get an answer, to find out if there’s someone on the other side.
When the familiar buzzing vibrates against her leg, Rey almost jumps on the low roof of the car. She cannot read while driving, so she hands the phone over to Ben almost dropping it over the stained carpet.
“What it says?”
“It’s from Dameron, they’re safe and moving too.” She feels her lungs filling with air, actually breathing in weeks.
He freezes at her side, reading the last bit.“Dameron think we should stay hidden a little longer.” Ben looks at her as if asking for ransom. She just keeps her eyes on the road.
interlude
In an old yellowed wall covered in sunset dust she reads writes in black letters “hell is proximity without intimacy”. She touches the rough surface as if letting the words burn onto her skin.
v
“Wake up and shine Ben. “ She says passing at him, a disregard pile of limbs and long-not-so-white sheets. He just respond in a incoherent murmur. Rey let’s out a giggle.
It’s just when she is brushing her teeths that she realizes it was the first time she called him by that new-old name aloud. If Ben noted something different, he is marvelous at concealing it.
vi
They stop by a gas station that look blend into the yellow-orange landscape. There’s not a sign with "free Wi-Fi” or any cameras, for good she doesn’t even see a phone to begin with. Is the most close she get to see Ben’s tense shoulder line soften.
As he fuels the car, she enters the convenience store half forgotten under the thick layer of red dust. There’s a sticker on the dirty glass indicating that credit card is not available, the warning seems to have been lost there for a long time.
“Think faster.” She says getting at him and throwing at his confused face a bag of snacks.
He catches the bag out of instintic, madeing a face after seeing the labels. “Really?”
“Ah, shut it! It’s this or eat sand and I can tell you from experience that doesn’t taste as good as a Pringles.”
She takes a sip from her own Coca-Cola, glass bottle and everything.The familiar taste of sugar and bubbles jolt at the back of her throat. It’s almost warm, and sure isn’t a good source of hidratation for a desert afternoon, but she can get herself to care.
Ben eyes follows the motion, he swallows hard and licks unconsciously the bottom of his lips. They have started to chapped at the center. Ben’s lips. She wonders how it would feel trace that new lines with the tip of her fingers.
A strident sound make they both jump in alarm.
Ben takes the phone listening to the other side. Stay still. Then Ben’s whole body lost to gravity like a string losing pression.
“Uncle?”
Rey’s knees become glass holding up a skyscraper.
“I understand.” and “I will.” Ben says and then goes quiet as Luke replies something. Ben hold Rey gaze intensily before pronouncing solemnly. “I promised.”
“He wants to talk to you." Ben handles Rey the phone.
"Master,” She breaths.
“Rey-” Luke begins before the line goes mute.
When Ben takes her hands, still sticky with sugar and dirty, she doens’t protest. In the car his face is pale than usual, his mouth move a few times, but she can heard no sound comes out. So she just stomps on the accelerator and holds even more harder his hands between her owns.
vii
They found a hotel with white fences and palm trees at the front, a poorly placed sign indicating vacancies and that breakfast is free.
As they pass the corridor, a wooden cross it’s the first thing to salute them. On the balcony as she gives the cash for the night a old lady searchs their fingers for something she will never find there.
“Single couples have separate rooms. That’s the rules.” She says dryly.
“That’s alright, Ben and I, we’re not a couple.” She tries to respond with humor. Even when they have shared rooms since the escape and shared countless hours holding at each other while expectating for the worst to happen.
“You’ll be fine?”
She almost laughs. “I’m always fine.” Rey retorts before closing the door.
Behind the blinds she can see the pool, painted in sepia and dream-time light. She goes to the bathroom expectating to find the mirror already smoky, Rey always wondered how Ben was able to withstand the water temperature without melting. But instead she finds the tiles cold. In the mirror her reflection watches her back, in phosphorescent halo.
She decides to turns off the light and tries to gain some sleep, the noise of the pool water churning and the singing of the cicadas the only sound that breaks into the night.
Rey wakes up with the loud sound that breaks through the thin walls, her hands to the muscle memory goes on her waist, looking for a weapon that is not there, her fingers only find the gray fabric of her shorts.
Her ears are whistling and her own treacherous body is shaking. But she’s been trained, and when it fail yet she can count on instinct. Find Ben. Get in the car. Run away.
When her hands reach the door and open it Ben is already there on the other side of the porch. As unleashed as she is.
But there is no shooting, or police or even the FBI. Just a blast of color in the sky. White. Red. Blue.
They run to each other anyway.
“We fine. We are safe. It was just some children with July Fireworks. We are safe.” He murmurs in her ear, even as his own hands are trembling against her scalp.
“Why?” Why did you come back, why did you save me. I was ready to go, to make me free and you took it from me. I deserve to know.
Ben responds by holding her waist even stronger, placing his foreheard agains’t hers.
“When I was alone and lost and craving my thoughts began to have the sound of your voice.” He procraim softly, his warm breath into her collarbone.
She holds a half laugh that sounds more like a sob. God, we’re such a mess.
“I cannot bear your suffering alone. I’m too clutched inside my owns for this, but we can offer something to each other.” She says inhaling in his bare shoulder the smell of cheap shampoo and soap that burns all the way from her nostrils down her throat. “Forgiveness.”
Maybe behind their back people would tell they are meant for legends. Or that their mere existence was a menaced. But the fact was, they’ve lost themselves somewhere in between. Maybe what they have was to fragile to be called love. Or it was what love really could mean, a chinese whisper game with the universe, screaming in the dark until someone hears and calls you back.