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Ben Solo is nine when he dreams of sand and darkness. The darkness is a common thread in Ben’s dreams. Neither comforting nor consoling. Looming. Lingering. This darkness is different though. It’s not an abyss filled with—poisoned—whispers of legacy and the past, only dryness and heat and metal. And sand. So much sand.
He’s climbing. He doesn’t know why, but he knows somehow down to the marrow of his bones that he has to. His throat feels barren, the dry air raking across his throat with each breath, and there are claws in his stomach, constantly kneading for something that is not there and will continue to not be.
He’s surrounded by so much...metal? Crooked and collapsed columns of what might be durasteel with strange shapes jutting off of them. Ben has no idea what they are or what their purpose is. Just that he needs to climb and find something. Even within this dream, Ben can feel the strangeness weighing on him; even the fantasies spun by the Correllian air cake that Da and Uncle Lando made that left Poe, Ofedya, and him passed out in a spray of crumbs after a late night raid of the kitchens can’t compare to this odd waking dream.
Ben stops climbing. Normally, Ben has control over is his body during his dreams. His mind may be miasma of light and darkness—loud, frantic, not his words—but his body is his. In this dream his mind is—his own thoughts and words and sounds—free? But his motions are not his. His body feels more...off, than usual. (He isn’t clumsy; it’s just sometimes the floor is less smooth than he expected.) His hand grasps a cylinder, sand-ridden and heavy. It seems like it’s made out of transparisteel but it’s hard to determine through the filth. His hands—covered in worn brown leather, like his Da’s coat—start to rub the object. A large mask reflects back. He’s never seen it before. This isn’t him—this body isn’t his, where is he, what is he?!?!?
He/they/it jumps.
An infant cries into darkness.
(He wakes to familiar whispers and swallows his sobs.)
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The dreams continue. The masked creature lives surrounded by sand and ships. Dead ships. Not living ones like Da’s. The creature breaks off pieces of ships and brings them to a blob. Does he eat them? Ben wonders. He’s a very large blob but Ben thought nothing could eat durasteel. (According to Mother he tried many times to eat Threepio. Sometimes he wished he tried harder.)
He’s halfway through his tenth year when he finds outs that the masked creature—a scavenger—is a girl. Small and slender but strong, with tanned freckled skin and dark eyes that reflect off of the piece of durasteel she’s aggressively scrubbing.
He knows her routine by now.
Every day, she takes her small speeder to the graveyard of ships and scavenges what hasn’t been completely ravaged by time. Then, after she’s laden down with far more than one her size should carry—she’s so strong—she heads to a small town and begins to clean her bounty. The brush bites at her hands, leaving flecks of torn skin and a sprinkling of red specks behind. Every time she brings the blob a new piece, she gets back small flat disks. Ben feels the anger and frustration at this transaction. She brings more and more each day, but gets less and less in return. He aches for her.
It’s not fair.
Afterwards, she heads home. Even her home is a grave. This one is an old walker, like the one’s he’s seen in holorecords of the war.
It’s sparse. A small bowl of dried flowers, a doll, some data chips, and not much else.
She takes one of the flat disks, turns it into bread, adds some meat to the plate and sits outside to watch the vast sea of emptiness surrounding her.
Soon she’ll head back inside to mark the walls and to sleep before beginning the routine again.
It’s somewhat soothing to fall into the body of this scavenger girl, to dream of sand and the bellies of long dead ships.
The whispers don’t come those nights.
(but still they come, worming underneath his skin, trying to imprint themselves into his bones.)
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She/he/they are lying in a bed contained in the room that is the extent of her home. The wind is howling, pounding on the dead remains that she lives within. She’s shaking, not from hunger for once (he’s learned to recognize the painful dig of sharp knives into their belly) but from the cold, a small doll clutched in her hands.
She’s alone.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
(He hopes whoever she’s waiting for comes back soon.)
(His father leaves all the time.)
(But he always comes back.)
(Always.)
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Da’s leaving. Again. He’s always leaving. Each time he swears to bring Ben with him.
To go flying amongst the stars with him and Uncle Chewie.
Ofedya gets to fly with Uncle Lando all the time and I’m 2 years older! Poe’s been flying since birth! He tries to build his case like his mother does in the senate. Arguments strong and commanding. Logical. Persuasive.
And yet, it’s not enough.
His voice wavers. His face is not a cool mask of refinement but a mismatch of inherited features. “But what do you expect when you lay down with a Corellian” was one of the nicer comments he had overheard whispered by the colleagues of his mother.
Every time Ben asks—no, begs— it’s always “not yet” or “not a good time” or “ask your mother” or “it’s dangerous out there kid” coupled with an odd look on his father, like he’s sorry but unswayed by Ben’s pleas.
If he was truly sorry, if he truly cared, he would let you come, instead of leaving you stranded on the ground, the voice insists, whispering in his bones. Ben closes his eyes and tries to breath the whispers away like Mother told him too.
They never speak of love in the Organa-Solo household. Always duty and respect and commitment and causes.
It's just something that’s there.
(but words never spoken still hold meaning for a young, awkward child)
The girl dreams of flying. Well, he thinks she dreams of flying. There are very few reasons to have so many flight simulators. Starfighters, transport vessels, freighters, and many more. She’s fearless. Or reckless. Or both.
(he admires it)
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The last time Ben dreams of her, he doesn’t dream of sand but of snow and darkness. She’s terrified. He’s terrified. She has a lightsaber and is being chased by a monster swathed in black. The world is alit with blue and red light.
She fights back.
The monster falls.
He falls as well.
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They have the scavenger on board. It’s a young woman. Sparse in frame and small. At least he thinks she’s small. The girl shares similar height to those under Captain Phasma’s command though, so perhaps her smallness may be relative.
(She’s not as small as his Ben’s General Organa. It was only way she was ever small.)
The scavenger girl’s clothes are dull, worn, and familiar. As if he’d seen them in the long dead dreams of a long dead boy.
(and yet his ghost still lingers.)
The ghost of Ben Solo is a fool but when he says what if, Kylo Ren humors him.
He kneels.
The force works in mysterious ways, whispers Ben Solo. The force is a weapon to wielded and nothing more, he bites back. He’s far too old for ghosts.
The girl stirs.
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“It is you,” he whispers into ice and darkness, full of reverence.
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There’s a boy staring longingly at the stars. He’s small and awkwardly constructed, small dark eyes and large ears reflecting off of the transparisteel panel. He’s clutching a pair of gold dice. Wishing for someone.
Rey wakes.