nexus_crossings | Take Two

Take Two

Ben Solo is out in the Plaza, wearing a dark sweater with a stitched-up hole in it and a sleek, dark blue cape. He's going out of his way to look flashy, though the effect is undone by the fact that he looks, for lack of a better word, disoriented. Like he isn't sure what he's doing or what he wants. The reason why becomes clear when he speaks - he's trying to keep a secret.

As for what it is, there are clues in his flushed features and reddened ears. A large Corviknight is perched beside him, and he's got his notebook under one arm. This time he isn't drawing or writing, instead focusing directly on the person who approaches him. His eyes and the quiet in his voice point to his lack of confidence.

"I was, ah, wondering something. Let's say you wanted to do something for a good friend." He breathes in. "More than a friend. Someone you have plans to propose to. How should I go about making the occasion special for her?"

He wrings his hands a little bit. "Sorry. I'm...not usually like this. But I want to do it right by her, and put what she wants first."

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Ben nods, considering. "Yeah, you're right...but sometimes if you've made enough bad calls, trusting your own judgement isn't so easy." That, and his social skills were badly stunted. They're better than they were. At the very least he can interact with society, keep control over his temper, and talk to other people. As far as he's concerned, that's a big step up.

He, too, values his own freedom and the good luck of a second chance, and knows it isn't to be taken for granted.

"She's a special bird, a Pokemon called Corviknight. Her name is Morrigan. I don't own her - she comes and leaves as she wants, but she's always on call if I need her help." Ben strokes her, and the Pokemon shuts her eyes. "Her kind are known for their size and intelligence. There's a sizeable Pokemon population out in the Wilds. Sometimes they choose people to live with, and I figure she decided she'd be happy with me. She's safe to interact with, just a little protective. She knows she can trust you now."

Morrigan opens her eyes again and squawks, more friendly this time.

Seeing the Corviknight greet Jill, he smiles a little. "You seem like a dog person. I tend to surprise people with the bird thing, but I'm fond of them."

"Unfortunately, I understand where you're coming from." She nearly grimaces, but it's more edging toward a somber smile. It speaks with a greater volume than her words alone do, but she offers little more in way of describing what she means by it. It's hard to say how much more she might reveal if questioned, but she doesn't seem to be fully against offering some details. Otherwise what would the point be of admitting to it?

"I see. I've never seen anything like her before." Pokemon must be the species? She doesn't know. Maybe it's something from another world entirely. Anything seemed likely here. "Yeah, huh. That must mean she's drawn to you in that case. Animals can see the good in people, I think, better than people can see it in themselves."

It's a little nudge of encouragement without it being overwhelming. She's not the type to go for it unless she feels it strongly and maybe with time she'd come to pushing and shoving, but for the moment it's a little more evened out if not sensible. Jill doesn't want to push him too hard if he's not certain of it even if it is something you have to get used to. Regardless of whether or not you have or need the confidence in the long-run, getting there by force alone never really does the trick.

"Ha ha, yeah? I guess I'd like something to hunt with that I can rely on. I don't think coming and going would be something I'd be comfortable with, so I'm definitely not a cat person." Jill doesn't expound too much, though, since that's not the real subject at hand. "So, any ideas already, though? Anything you're considering? If so, you could run 'em by me and I could try to lend a hand with my perspective?"

"My trust in myself....isn't the best. It's the same with you? If you don't want to elaborate, it's fine." Ben will discuss his own past, though he isn't proud of it at all. "Not the same, but we may be able to understand each other there. I promise you I won't judge you for anything. I can't."

"Yeah - it's hard to explain, but the Pokemon have been here in the Nexus long before I was. Like most of the animals and people here, they're imports from the world they come from. People don't go in the Wilds as often as they used to for a few different reasons - there are dangerous animals there, and there are people who don't welcome visitors the way the larger Nexus does. The anti-violence field isn't as strong. I go there, but I'm not known for good sense, and I'm careful where I step."

Force-users are powerful, but far from invulnerable, and Ben has had enough losses and close shaves that he knows better than to tempt fate.

He shifts. "Sure. I apologize ahead of time if it's awkward. None of my mentors, and I've had several, particularly trained me for situations like this. But I think as the saying goes, two heads are better than one."

"A little, yeah. Sounds like you and I went through some shit." She doesn't so much ignore his question as hesitate on it. There's a pause, but she meets his eyes, clear that she has some inner turmoil and difficulty in describing what she's gone through. It's complicated. "...for close to four years, I was under control of a mind control serum. I could see what I was doing, feel it."

She gestures widely, walks a little when she talks to keep herself busy. It makes her feel less like his eyes are on her even if they are. She'd rather him look at her than look away when she says this, anyway, but there's only so much she can do. She inhales sharply through her nose and looks slightly over her shoulder at him. Her eyes are a little glossy, clear that she's withholding a lot of details. Four years, after all, is a long time.

"I was made to do the very opposite of what I fought against during that time. I injected people with viruses, fought for my enemy and did reconaissance for him. I ensured his survival." She injected him with what he needed to survive once or twice, at his behest. A gift to her as a reminder she was trapped, that she did it. Jill doesn't mention that her blood was used to strengthen the virus he was concocting, but that held weight to her, too. Heavy on her shoulders. It was a burden she didn't know how to hold yet couldn't share.

"I see. I suppose that makes sense. It happens where I'm from, too. Generally it becomes an intrusive species, though." She hasn't seen enough of them, though, she thinks? for it to be considered that, however. Either way she's happy to have the topic of discussion not be herself. "I didn't know there was an anti-violence field. But I also haven't tried to start a fight. I don't suspect I'll need to, but do you know where it draws the line? Just in case."

If she can show up here, so can Wesker. He might be easier to subdue if there's a way to avoid fighting but she knows ultimately she'll want to bring him down. Even if she might not be able to on her own.

"Romance is awkward, I think. None of mine prepared me for feelings outside of the job and what I got was 'don't let it get to you,' essentially. I think the best way to gauge things is by our own ears at this point."

"Mind control serum. Of all the treacherous..." Ben breathes in heavily. "I was a space tyrant, and did a lot of terrible things that come with that territory. And while I was groomed for that role - I lived most of my life with a very powerful dark wizard in my head, who stoked all my worst qualities - I made my own bad choices, so I don't have the excuse of mind control. I hate who I was and what I did...but it can't be undone."

He bows his head a little. Ben isn't proud of who he was as Kylo Ren, but he owes Jill the truth as she told him hers. Kylo is still part of him, his history and experiences, and his actions are Ben's. But he sympathizes with her situation. The idea of being under someone's total control like that, someone who's a hated enemy at that, is incredibly disturbing.

"It was an old enemy of my family, and he enjoyed watching us tear ourselves apart. He chose me as his tool to help him do it. I turned against him and fought to stop him, but too late and after a lot of damage had been done. My friend...she helped me realize that I was on the wrong path. She was badly wounded. I died to make sure she made it home safely, and I woke up here."

Snoke used more subtle methods than that for leading Ben under his sway, but Ben suspects that if it hadn't been for his and Palpatine's influence he would have grown up all right. But the voices had been there since he was a baby, too young to understand what they were saying to him, manifesting as bad dreams and night terrors. And when he was older they set to work twisting him into a weapon against his own family. So he'll never know what he would have been like if he'd grown up free of them.

Still, he finds Nexus politics easier to talk about.

"There aren't hard and fast lines, but if you see territory marked by blue banners, that's controlled by the Eliksni of House Winter. They have had a harsh history that has left them territorial and distrusting of strangers. I sympathize, given my own history with abandonment and anger - but that wouldn't do me any favors with them. The field isn't infallible, and people have found ways around it before. So I don't completely trust it, though it's saved me in the past."

"It was his form of revenge against me. Can't say I can think of anything worse." There's a nervous, chittering little bit of laughter. It's clear it's not something she talks about much let alone thinks of. Out of sight, out of mind, in control. It takes her a moment not to think of him as the creature called a tyrant made through viral experimentations in her world and she pauses to listen. "You've changed, though. That takes a lot and... regardless of the reason behind it, you've made that decision. It's more than I can say for anyone I've fought against. Some things you can't walk back from, choice or not. You have to live with them."

She obviously blames herself for her actions despite the fact she has no reason to, but it's still something she struggles with. Enough that she offers a faint touch of her hand to his shoulder. It's awkward, but the intent is genuine; it doesn't hold any false promises or echo any sweet lies. It just is.

"Sounds like a real asshole," she starts simply, even if casually, as another form of reassurance. Her own brand. "But you still managed to change, to hear her above the other voices. That's what stopped me, too. I struggled to fight against he serum, but when my partner entreated me, when he called me, it was like my brain would short circuit. I was hissing and it felt like my brain was being shocked, but I fought against it even though it had me down to the most primal levels of thought. It was my last chance."

She didn't think she'd escape. To this day, she's still in awe. Chris had put down his weapons and come for her despite the fact she'd hurt him -- kept hurting him -- and for that, she's forever grateful.

"I see. So the best way to get in a scuffle is to go past them... not that I'm suggesting I want to really damage someone or anything, but," she looks to the side, trying to spot a banner and start to form a mental map, "But if I can come here, people from my world can come here. I have to plan for the dangerous ones."

It's clear she's very take-charge and wouldn't let anyone else put themselves in harm's way for her sake.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry for what you went through. It can't be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is, is it?"

"My grandfather and uncle stopped him the first time. Didn't put him down for good, unfortunately, but it took a long time to come back from being thrown down a reactor shaft and figure he had a grudge. My uncle...Luke Skywalker...my relationship with him was complicated. I used to look up to him, but he saw something in my head while I was sleeping that made him consider killing me. He decided against it, but I saw him with his lightsaber over my bed and panicked."

Ben sighs. He doesn't forgive Luke, exactly, but he has a better understanding of what happened now, and he figures both of them were tricked.

"It still feels strange, but it's slowly getting better. I have more friends now - and for someone like me that means a lot. For what it's worth, I see you as one of them. What I told you I don't tell everybody." Ben nods gloomily, but accepts the gesture of comfort. He smiles weakly back, his own gesture. "That's one way to put it. I'm glad you had someone who was able to pull you back. We're both lucky to have people like them in our lives."

"We have a deal with them," Ben explains. "They don't attack us and in exchange we stay off their territory. For what it's worth I don't think they're inherently bad people, just bitter and angry and desperate. I can understand those things. I made a friend who's a member of their species, though not affiliated with that group, and he explained where they're coming from."

He knows Jill's universe has some very dangerous creatures and people in it, and doesn't particularly want to meet them. But he's glad to know there are more people who are practical. The Nexus isn't always nice, and occasionally someone with bad intentions slips through.

"You're right, you know. I can't undo what I did...but if I'm alive I can work where I can to do what's right now."

"Once of those types. Been there, but they're usually not human by that point." Jill watches him briefly and there's a flicker of discomfort in her eyes. Even if something terrible happened to him and he couldn't control it, to think that the way they'd go about preventing it was just killing your nephew didn't jive well with her. "There's other ways to do things than just... that. At least I'd like to think so."

But she was a romantic in that sense; she believed in hope and survival, regardless of cost. She believed that there had to be another way until there absolutely was no other option at all. Which is a little funny considering Jill is also a card-carrying pessimist.

"Yeah? Thanks." She smiles, all crooked teeth and true grin; it reaches her eyes and has her age show with little wrinkles beneath them. It's something rare for her, for it to be completely real rather than a side act meant to deflect. Her response is to carry on with a playful little punch to his bicep. "We're both fortunate, yeah."

She listens carefully about this and it isn't exactly her ideal but she'll take what she can get. You can make due with perimeters when you know them and slip through the cracks of laws and rules if you learn them.

"Then we're the same in that. It's what I'm trying to do." She gestures a little, not quite ushering him but suggesting they get a move on. "C'mon, drinks on me. You can tell me all about this gal of yours."

"It involved some kind of dark magic and cloning, I suppose would be the best way to describe it to an outsider. I can't say I paid that much attention to how it worked. I didn't have that many lines back then - but that sort of thing was one of them."

Ben was never fond of that kind of Sith magic, and even less so now that he had been a victim of it. He barely bothers to hide the disgust and contempt he feels for the Emperor when he speaks.

But he brightens a little when he feels the touch to his arm. "I would never have described myself as lucky, but...I guess I am." He's still here, after all, and he has opportunities that he sometimes wonders whether or not he deserves.

"Her name's Rey, and I'll be happy to tell you all about her," Ben says, but he's clearly eager about the idea of a drink. "What were you thinking of? There are a few places for a drink available here."

"I still have a hard time believing in magic, but I know plenty about the horrible things science can do. And I can understand, especially as an outsider how it would be easy to not find it relevant or how to catch on." She reassures him, though she also doesn't know the levels of how far he went. As a friend, however, she might just put him in an armbar until she's satisfied with her frustration -- or something equally awkward.

"Cloning, to some degree, is used in the genetic experiments they do -- often on humans -- that I combat. Science sometimes doesn't know when to stop, especially when power or money is involved." Jill knew that too well, unfortunately.

She beams a bit at him, not quite jumping but there's a little pep in her step!

"You went through some shit, you survived, you're here, and you've got your girl. What's luck if not that?" She doesn't necessarily believe in luck (mostly because if she does, hers is pretty crappy), but sometimes she'd like to think other people had good luck. That fortune was on their side. Sometimes the universe just did good by someone.

"Rey, got it." Though Jill's started off, she hesitates when he asks where they're headed. "I was thinking the first I saw, but if you have a preference, by all means. I think we both prefer the same kind of atmosphere." As in anything but a night club, no pounding music or annoying dancing on the floor. That seemed to be both of their MOs. "If you saw my partner, I think you'd know him from a mile away. About six feet tall, just shy of three hundred pounds. I haven't seen anyone that's nearly his size here."

"We have cloning and bioweapons where I come from, too," Ben says, able to follow. Certain kinds of technology always seem to surface - he knows stories of the Clone Wars that took place long before he was born and which set the stage for everything that came afterwards. "They were used as weapons in war. Our galaxy is different from yours, but perhaps not so different."

They were both weapons themselves, at some point in their lives, and he feels he can connect with that. Ben is a weapon no longer.

He chuckles, a low sound that comes from deep in his chest. "I tend to stick out in a crowd, too. Six-foot-three, black clothes. I'm used to being the tallest man in a room." When he was younger he was always tall, though he had been skinny and long-limbed rather than barrel-chested as he grew into them. He's met taller, especially here.

Jill's instincts are right. Nightclubs aren't Ben's style - he prefers places where he can blend in, one more hunched figure with shadowed features and little to say. He tries to socialize, but it still feels strange. "There's a place I know close by where we both can get a drink and a bite to eat. That'll do."

"From what I gather, bioterrorism is usually just used to cull crowds and make people ill -- or die. Where I come from, as you already know, it's used to turn people into weapons and mutate them." But it sounds like despite hers being science and his being 'magic' that they're pretty similar. Of course, it's a downer to talk about this sort of thing so she tries to focus on the subject at hand -- or, at least the reason this conversation all started: someone might just be getting married on the horizon. Even as much of a dour pessimist that Jill can be, she still gets touched by that sort of thing.

"That's fair. I didn't realize you were quite that tall, though." She says while having to look up to meet his eyes. She calls herself five-five but she's a few centimeters short of it; he's nearly a full foot taller than her. Funny. "Guess I tend to be drawn to people who don't fit in... or maybe it's standing out?" A compliment rather than something awkward.

Jill prefers quiet places if she's out and about and if there's music, she prefers classic rock that isn't blaring with bass and beating so hard she can feel her heart jump in her chest. Atmospheric music in the background, if you will. Who knows? Maybe there'll be an old beat-up jukebox she can play some Springsteen or AC/DC on. She won't hold her breath, though.

"Then lead the way." She still walks like she's leading, however. Just a step ahead.

"From what I've seen, a lot of worlds here have things in common. Including similar problems in some cases." Ben listens curiously. "But some good things are there in common, too. I feel very lucky that we're having the conversation we are, and to have people in my life who care."

Ben shrugs a little. "Size isn't everything, obviously. Rey beat me in a fight twice, and I'm a head taller than her. It's a matter of how you use the skills you have and natural talent. We're...in sync. It's complicated, but we have a psychic bond that's unique to the two of us. We can talk to each other that way, and know how the other one is doing. It can be awkward, but it's also very helpful."

He leads the way, finding the place he's looking for about ten minutes ahead.

It isn't surprising to hear that there's commonality between worlds, even ones that seem vastly different than hers (like his). It's strange to think about space travel, about other planets being inhabited even if she was sure life was 'out there' somewhere. They just have means to travel such a distance that it's not like a shrimp or amoeba that's considered their life. Humanoid life is less expected.

"I never know how to express my gratitude when I get close to someone. I guess having their back and being honest with them instead of closed-off says a lot, but that tends to be 'normal' for the average person." Suggesting she's not like the average person, apparently.

"Oh, I can beat Chris. No problem. I'm strong, but my strength is in speed. It's the little hits built up rather than one good hit that's much stronger, if that makes sense?" She wouldn't call the bond she has with Chris to be a literal psychic bond, but maybe figurative. Ben, she imagines, means pretty literal considering. "It means there's a different slew of challenges when you train together, right? Chris generally can predict my movements, even when I try to sneak in a lariat or right hook instead of using kicks. It comes with knowing someone well, I think."

The walk's pleasant and she's happy to have company and to provide it for the moment, but she grows all the more curious about Rey -- especially when offered the information about their unique bond. Made for each other, she supposes. It's a nice feeling to find that fit and to acknowledge it, to get there.

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Take Two

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