theres this thing i don’t understand abt the binding of isaac. the story is isaac confronting his own religious trauma and familial abuse in the form of a story he can understand as he suffocates to death. right? like the plot itself is fairly simple all the gameplay is just to serve as metaphors for his abuse and sort of analyze him as a character.

but theres this between floor transition scene where it shows the lost speaking to his mom from the attic and i assume hes acting as the god we hear in the opening cutscene right? why is that there. we know the “your son has become corrupt!” thing is not literally happening its just a story isaac has made up but why would he include his own dead soul commanding his mother to kill him in his story? maybe its just kids being creative and strange

Delirium Takes Over Me, You're Just Another Casualty

Her coping mechanisms aren't always the best, but at least no one innocent gets hurt.

Characters: Cylas, unnamed other characters, a friend named Emilia

Words: 2085

Content warnings: violence, death

There was snow outside when she woke up. A thin layer, barely deserving of the term “blanket”.

There was snow outside and she was cold.

Yet, she didn’t turn on the heating. It wasn’t that kind of coldness. It was the kind that came with the knowledge that things would stay like this, forever. Not the snow, no, that would melt within the next couple hours. But this emptiness, hidden deep beneath the anger at those who made her like this, the need to take revenge, the grief over what she had lost and longing for what could have been.

She tried to think of her friends’ laughter, the warmth of her sisters’ hug, the way their inside jokes, like a secret only they knew and understood, warmed her. But nothing got through. She felt cold. Frozen.

There was a gentle nudge at her leg and she looked down to see two big, yellow-green eyes look up at her. Cats. Food. Right. She had responsibilities, other living being that relied on her. She knew that if she died and enough time passed, they would eat her body. But she didn’t mind. Better than them starving, and wasn’t consumption its own sign of love, in a way? Becoming one?

Plus, that way she’d serve a purpose even in death.

She wondered if pets who had eaten human meat were put down.

Maybe dying at home wouldn’t be that great after all.

After filling the cats’ food bowls, she went to her wardrobe and pulled a big trash bag from the back. She grabbed a baggy grey sweater that had a few holes and old, washed-out jeans with patches and rough, uneven seams. Simple black leggings underneath, a top, long sleeved shirt. The yellow raincoat with colourful dots and water-repelling pants. Woolen knit hat, leather gloves, scarf. She’d made it herself, after finding glittering, rainbow coloured yarn on offer.

It was cold outside, her breath visible in the air. Proof that she was alive, breathing.

To the right, the road would eventually lead into town. To the left, there’d be nothing for miles. Only woods and nature. Traffic was probably a mess, snow always seemed to hit people unexpected – snow in December, who would have thought? Especially after temperatures had been below freezing in the nights for a while.

For a moment she considered getting into her car, driving up to Devil’s Peak, visiting the hogs, but there she might run into people. People she knew. She didn’t feel like socialising.

So, she walked left.

The snow and slightly frozen grass crunched under her boots and she mentally compared it to the sound of a nose breaking, or crushing bone. Though the layers of clothes combined with her walking did a good job warming her body up, she was still cold. She felt like crying but no tears would come. Maybe she should've stayed home and watched a sad film instead, or called her therapist.

Just then, a car came into view. She didn’t hold out her arm, or signalled in any way that she was looking to hitch a ride. Still, the car stopped, and a middle-aged man asked if she needed help. His wife was looking at her wary, children pressing themselves against the back window to get a glimpse. They were driving towards the town.

She denied, said, she lived close by, they’d pass her cabin just a little down the road. Even suggested some places they could stop for food if they should want to. The man didn’t seem too happy about this but didn’t push. They thanked her and drove on.

The next car came up from behind her, at first only slowing down to drive alongside her. A smell of cigarettes and alcohol hit her as a man rolled down the window and he asked if he could help her. She asked if he’d been drinking. He said no, only his friend, that’s why he was taking him home, and he didn’t seem to be lying. Still, she acted indecisive but the man was insistent. He assured her she didn’t need to worry, he had a teenage daughter and wife, showed off his ring and some pictures.

Fathers always seemed to appear more trustworthy, for some reason she didn’t understand. Didn’t fathers kill their wives and children all the time? Who said his wedding ring and the photographs weren’t as fake as his smile?

She got into the backseat and didn’t miss the predatory glint in his eyes as he watched her through the rear-view mirror. Caught you, it seemed to say. You walked right into my trap.

She took of her hat, scarf, and gloves.

It wasn’t long before he pulled off the main road, onto some path, and she played his game. What was going on, where were they taking her? She knew fear, she knew begging, she knew being so scared she couldn’t move. She had spent so long feeling it that slipping into the role was natural, the sheer panic people like these expected and revelled in fitting her like a second skin.

They stopped at the side of the path and the driver got out of the car, opened her door, and roughly grabbed her arm. He pulled her out and she “stumbled”, looking at him with wide-eyes. He laughed. His friend took a while longer, speech slurred.

If you don’t fight, we won’t have to hurt you, the driver said. Not too much at least. His friend laughed so hard he started coughing.

And it’s not like anyone will come to help you. All the way out here, no one will here you scream.

To show off that he could, he lifted his jacket just enough to show off the gun he was carrying. Before he could fully comprehend what was happening, she had grabbed the gun and pushed him away from her.

While he was busy trying to process the situation, she checked if the gun was loaded correctly – all the way out here, no one will here you scream – and then shot him right in the groin.

He screamed, but the only response he got was the rustling in the underbrush as startled animals scurried off. His friend, who had found his way around the car, caught a bullet to the knee. Kneecaps are a privilege, not a human right, she repeated what a friend had once said. He just stared at her in bewilderment.

Neither of them had expected this turn of events.

The wind was playing with her hair, the freezing temperature cutting into her cheeks. Her fingers were cold, yet she wasn’t. She felt more alive than she had in a while.

The gun hit the ground with a dull thud and her hands found their place on the handles of her knives like they belonged there. Maybe they did.

The man, former driver, was still writhing in pain, hardly aware of what was going on. The other one had begun crawling away, back towards the road. She watched him for a moment, seemingly indifferent, before walking after him. Rolling him over was easy, she hardly even felt his struggling. The knife he had managed to pull from somewhere quickly ended up on the floor, and then, after some consideration, she stabbed it through his hand and into the forest floor. It was harder than expected cause she’d forgotten that the soil was probably frozen.

She stood back up and he squirmed, crying, begging, calling for help, trying to weakly pull out the knife but unable to withstand the pain. Again, she stood still to think, consider her next move. Depending on how severe the other man’s wound was, he might actually bleed out, and she didn’t want that. Instead, she returned to him and pulled him over to his friend, leaving him to lie on his back right next to the other man.

Her fingers itched and her face felt hot, a blush probably having spread down her neck as well.

She crouched down and straddled the first man, his friend yelling unintelligible gibberish. The body was warm, enough to feel through the clothes – a sharp contrast to the icy coldness of the floor.

Shh, she said, reaching for his face and caressing his cheek gently. It’ll all be over soon.

He begged. He pleaded. Don’t to this you don’t have to do this please they won’t tell anyone just think of his family-

His voice was cut off by a scream as her knife pierced his chest the first time. His friend screamed too.

Again and again and again the blade sunk into his flesh, easily cutting through clothes, skin, muscle. There was so much blood, coating and warming her hands, pooling under her knees. The bushes and trees around her were covered by a dusting of white, but all she saw was red. The man’s screams turned into wet coughs, choked sobs. And then, nothing.

His friend was crying, staring in disbelief and shock – she was surprised he hadn’t thrown up or passed out, many did.

She didn’t even bother standing up, just crawled over to him, assuming the same position. No, he mumbled. Please don’t.

She smiled sweetly, reaching to caress his face as well. He tried to turn his head away, but she grabbed his jaw and held him in place. You won’t let a little bit of blood bother you, will you?

His tears mixed with the blood on his cheeks.

Just relax, honey, she said with a soft, kind voice. You know what’s coming, no need to be afraid.

She didn’t stop until his torso was merely a mass of blood-soaked fabric, bone, and tissue. Then she slit his throat, grabbed a rock from the side of the road, and smashed in his face as well. Repeat on the other body.

When she was done, she was breathing heavy, her arms were shaking and weak, her knees hurt from kneeling so long. It was getting dark already. She wiped her hands with some cleaning wipes and her knives with a piece of fabric – she'd clean them properly at home – before slipping out of her raincoat and wipe it down as well, along with her pants. After getting dressed and putting on her hat, scarf, and gloves again, she started her way home.

Hitching a ride could be risky, once the bodies were found people might report having seen her and picked her up. But then again, the judge hadn’t believed her to almost have beaten a guy to death despite CCTV footage, and the time she had smashed a man’s face into a wall in a pub, the police had straight up refused to even take witness statements, let alone look at videos that had been taken. There was evidence of the officers talking the man into changing his story to him having tripped and fallen into the wall, because there was no way she could hurt anyone, right?

The choice was taken from her when a familiar car pulled up.

“The fuck are you doing walking around here all alone in the dark? You’re gonna get hit doing shit like this!” Emilia said, her red hair glowing like flames in the yellow light of the car. “Get your ass in here, now. And that’s not a question.”

She gave a tired smile. “Got it.”

It was warm inside and smelled of cinnamon and vanilla.

“A bad day?” Emilia half asked, half stated.

“Yeah.”

Emilia sighed. “Wanna talk about it?”

She shook her head. “I’m better now.”

Emilia seemed like she wanted to say more, but decided against it.

She looked over at her friend. “You still selling those apple pie muffins at the bakery?”

“Sure do, people seem to like ‘em.”

“Remind me to come get some in the next couple days.” She said.

Emilia chuckled. “Will do. But you know that Ma’ will probably talk you into getting those chocolate cheesecake muffins as well, right?”

“Guess there’s worse. She’s a lovely person, and I feel like I haven’t visited in ages.”

The car slowed down and Emilie pulled into the driveway. “Be safe. That means, no walking along roads in the middle of the night, and get some food and water inside of you. You look like death.”

She climbed out of the car and threw a smile back over her shoulder. “Love you too.”

Emilia shook her head but returned the smile. “See you around.”

With that, Emilia drove off.

Authors have now been revealed for For one is love and both are one in love!

Over 170 fics were posted to our Exchange this month and we are so excited to finally share the authors with you!  Thank you so much to all of the writers who wrote for this event!  

For one is love and both are one in love collection on AO3 |  Gift Fic Master Post Part One | Treats Master Post

Gift Fic Master Post Part Two:

In Other Words, Hold My Hand by Cwenphy for MBlair

Stargazing and waltzing on the lake.

Meet Me in the Meadow by Miranda13 for MeadowHayle

Ben was not the typical Alpha. Rey was not the typical Omega. Utterly indifferent to other people, only in their fantasies or dreams would they experience desire. After many years of loneliness, they meet in a support group for struggling demi-humans, and everything changes. Ben and Rey embark together on a healing journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Maybe, they don’t need to be alone, anymore. Maybe, they were never alone, to begin with.

The Rise of Ren by Ayrith for Merixcil

For the last seat in the Knights of Ren, there are two candidates. The first, a powerful scion of a great Force legacy, formally trained by the last Jedi. The second, a force sensitive urchin with no past, nurtured by the cut-throat criminal underworld. Kylo or Kira. There can only be one.

Legion by Tiara_of_Sapphires for midwinterspring

The war was over. Across the galaxy, hundreds called out in one voice: “I need a teacher.” A fic for midwinterspring for the RFFA Valentine’s Day 2020 Exchange Prompt: Rey and Ben train new Force users and fix things

All That Glitters by PalenDrome for MintyCel

The Kingdom of Exegol holds the key to Kylo's future. All he needs to do is to get past the omega guarding it.

Thaw My Frozen Heart by DarkSideOfMe for Miranda13

“A bounty hunter decides that the former Supreme Leader would make an excellent prize and manages to get the jump on Ben while he is on a mission for the Resistance, encasing him in carbonite. Rey is quick to mount a solo rescue mission and helps Ben recover from the hibernation sickness when she eventually gets him back." - Reylo-Prompts

Good Boy by rissanox for MissCoppelia

Ben adopts a dog who needs some training. Thankfully, he gets help (and a little bit more) from Rey, a dog trainer.

the world's not perfect but by aNerdObsessed for misszeldasayre

What would happen in a galaxy where the New Republic never got off the ground and the First Order choked before it started? Maybe a scavenger girl would become a foundling under the care of a Mandalorian bounty hunter.  Maybe a troubled child would shake off a burdensome legacy to follow his father's less-than-lawful profession. Maybe a cocky flyboy would find himself using his charm to win gigs delivering spice for the syndicates. Maybe a mechanically-minded girl would start taking off-the-books jobs for the occasional criminal. Maybe a boy with too many questions would leave his parents to learn about this thing called the Force. Turns out the galaxy is a lawless place with every sentient for themselves.

like roses and clover by notkellymarie for mrstater

" There is no comfortable position. No matter how he laid down on his cot, his bones feel brittle, his skin itching all over with the sensation of a thousand ants crawling all over his body. His stomach swirls like a maelstrom, and he blames it on the caf he had in order to stay awake through one of his lessons. Pathetic. You can’t even sleep right. He promises to skip the caf the next day, and his consciousness floats on the surface even as he wishes to be pulled under." -- Ben Solo has never had a single good night's sleep in his life. Rey of Jakku never wanted one. The Battle of Exegol rang and wants to know if this is still the case.

It never gets easier, you just get better.  by PoliticalPadmé for MyJediLife

Ben is an addict working through his pain. Rey is a counselor assigned to his care. They weren't supposed to fall in love.

Dreamscape by cuddlesome for Nebulous Bounds (RainonyourBack)

Kylo mostly worsens and occasionally betters Rey's visions while she sleeps.

Why we can't be by MedowHayle for newseptembers

When old Maz forsaw a dyad, Rey never thought it would be a soulmate bond between her and the First Order coven member Kylo Ren. Desperately trying to undo her connection to the enemy, she seeks out ancient texts and meets Ben, a bookshop owner and crafter, who seems to catch her attention every time they meet.

Beside the Lake by elegygoldsmith for Ngoc12thefangirl

“Ben…” It’s half groan, half laugh, all ache — and he wants to reach out to her but he doesn’t trust himself to stop at only holding her hand. Rey’s gaze softens, and that grief she’s been feeling comes roiling out of her like a thunderstorm. It’s too much for him to take. “Tell me.” “I want kids.” She says the words so softly that he might not have known what she was saying if he hadn’t seen her lips moving and heard the syllables echoing in his mind. “Oh.” It’s stupid, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “I mean…” She fumbles again, but this time she doesn’t even bother finishing in words. I want kids now. A short, smutty one-shot in which Ben and Rey grapple with the next step in their life together.

You Need A Teacher by andabatae for ninecrimes

After the events of TROS, Rey returns to Ahch-To... and a healed Ben Solo. There, she plans to consummate their relationship. Too bad she has no idea what she's doing.... Luckily, Ben is happy to teach her everything he knows. ----- “Okay.” Rey took a deep breath, preparing herself for the strange, mortifying experience to come. “So what do I do?” “Well,” he said, “first you let me kiss you some more. Then, when you’re ready, you take your clothes off. Then you sit on my face.” “Just like that?” “Just like that.”

Grey Skies Ahead by Lightningpelt for NiriKeehan

She took his hand—not in the name of the Light, or the Dark. They were a dyad, the embodiment of balance—an Alliance of Grey.

Ever as before and ever just as sure as the sun will rise by Cairdiuil_Paiste for OccasionallyCreative

The war is over. On a peaceful estate in Naboo's Lake Country, Rey and Ben prepare for their wedding and think of how they got here. Using lyrics of title song of 'Beauty and the Beast'.

swish of the bumblebee by qotsisajakk for OptimisticBeth

She should get the sand - and gravel, and rocks - and run all the way home and make things right for him. Although, the fish had gotten her into this mess in the first place, however inadvertently, so maybe she should move him to Finn’s room where she wouldn’t have to look at his little fins swishing away ever again, reminding her of- Rey's betta fish needs an upgrade in living conditions. When she posts a question asking for help, she gets a little more than she bargained for.

Dissolver of Sugar by Apricot for optimus_pam

“Rey...what could anyone do, to make up for what Kylo Ren did?” Or: Redemption isn't supposed to be easy. A TROS fix-it fic, of sorts.

Delirium by TearoomSaloon for PalenDrome (nerdherderette)

That was the trouble with these things, wasn't it? Every once in a while the drugs backfired and they both got a dose of what was really, probably, very potent pheromones. Excerpt: He heard the edge of anger in her voice, the snarl she tried so desperately to conceal. The powder was getting to her. "You're jealous, aren't you?" "No!" "You are." Against his better judgement, he stalked to her, backing her to the wall. "You can't stand the fact that you're not my first partner." "I'm not your partner!" He leaned in, lips almost to her ear. "You want to be though, don't you?" She barreled into him with a scream, head connecting with his chest as she tackled him to the floor. Faster than he could react, she had his arms pinned over his head, knees firmly pressing into his breastbone. "I don't want to be anything to you. Not your friend, not your ally, and especially not your lover."

Renewed by DrPearlGatsby for patig_00

The world between worlds is neither hot nor cold. So when Ben feels his arms break into gooseflesh, when his shoulder aches with not a remembrance but an actual twinge of pain, when he tries to rouse himself from meditation and realizes that he’s fighting the need to fall back asleep, he opens his eyes—in a room on the Millennium Falcon. [[Something in the Force allows Ben Solo to be resurrected on the Millenium Falcon during a little Resistance mission. Expected hilarity ensues. Angst WITH A HAPPY ENDING.]]

 a million miles (cross the ocean)  by bittersnake for persimonne

in which the Force tries to pay back some of the debt it owes the Skywalkers.

All that's best of dark and bright by ArdeaJestin for persopilliankore

Rey had big plans for Valentine's Day: laundry, errands, and an evening of fantasizing over her impossibly sexy building manager, Ben Solo. That was before she found an anonymous love poem in her mailbox.

Wherever There is You, I Will be There Too by optimus_pam for politicalmamaduck

According to Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked. Rey journeys there in search of a lost soul.

Laid To Rest by mrstater for PoliticalPadmé (magnetgirl)

Ben wants to show Rey the galaxy, to see it with her. First, they have business on Naboo.

What Was Lost Is Now Found by Ceallaigh for punkeraa

"Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." The Parable of the Prodigal Son, New International Version

Be With Me by tmwillson3 for qotsisajakk

TROS Fix-it. When Rey asks the Jedi of the past to be with her, the bond she shares with Kylo Ren also opens. He is forced to come to terms with his growing feelings for her, and together, they take down the greatest evil, those words continue to bring them together.

Always in Motion by maq_moon for QueenOfCarrotFlowers

Dr. Rey Jackson, archaeologist, is mistaken for a celebrity and given an upgrade to Business Class on her incredibly long flight. Unfortunately, she's been seated next to the douchebag who's been pestering her for the last two hours. More unfortunately, she finds a letter in her carry-on bag telling her that their plane is about to go down. The worst part? The letter was written by Luke Skywalker, a man who has been dead for years.

we might be the outsiders by UndergroundValentine for radioactivesaltghoul

As though, in a blink, the cavern becomes light, and he sees the pale cream and gold shimmer of the creature, with a dark brown pattern across the head and hood.

Between the Sun and the Moon by radioactivesaltghoul for redbelles

The Force demands that Rey and Ben pay a price for the power they gained in their preparation to take down Palpatine, but they don’t learn what they paid until it disturbs the peaceful life they’re trying to build together after the war is over.

Starless Sky, Black by dustoftheancients for RedPaladin465

“Why did you change your mind?” It takes a long time for her to answer. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

The Girl From The Tower by itsnotillegal for ReyloBrit

Prompt: "Quiet and obedient Rey lives a godly life with her grandfather, until the family hire a new gardener Ben, a mysterious and deeply attractive man. Sparks fly between the two."

The Falcon and the Wolf by ClockworkCrow for reylotrash711

On the fifth anniversary of the destruction of Starkiller Base the Senate is throwing a masked ball and invited members of the old Resistance. Still trying to rehabilitate his image, Senator Ben Solo has no choice but to attend. Written to fulfill this prompt: Ben and Rey dance at a masked ball, unaware of who they are dancing with. Until the masks are taken off at midnight. Romance and Sexual Tension ensue, will they be able to refrain their urges? Hell no. But I also mixed in a healthy dose of this prompt as well: Prompt 2 - What if Ben was unable to bring Rey back and had to call on the help of the Skywalkers that came before him? Is he ready to pay the price of losing his force sensitivity for the women he loves?

and we'll live a long life by LRRH17 for ReyloTrashCompactor (NextToSomething)

When Rey heals him on Kef Bir, Ben has a vision. He and Rey must work together to prevent it from coming true.

Found Belonging by apisa_b for rissanox

Rey joins her friends and former comrades in arms on Chandrila for the festivities around the anniversary of the battle of Exegol. To everyone’s surprise she is accompanied by two mysterious Mandalorians.

Loathe Thy Neighbor by ReyloTrashCompactor for SaintHeretical

Rey's neighbor is the worst. He listens to terrible music, he's impolitely large, and he smells incredible. She hates almost everything about him. Especially the smelling good bit.

Can You Feel The Love Tonight? By ElleRen31 for shiiera

Ben Solo travels to Takodana National Park in South Africa on a research mission where he meets fellow researcher, Rey. While they might get along as well as lions and hyenas at first, perhaps they have more in common with each other than they think.

He's Just Not That Into You(r) Scent by SaintHeretical for shipperofdarkness

Rey is a young and single Omega who hasn't had a lot of luck so far finding a nice Beta guy who isn't a total flake. They say they've had a great time with her, but seem to have a difficult time with calling her back. Ben is an Alpha bartender who is tired of hearing about her dating difficulties, and is ready to drop some truth bombs. An ABO He's Just Not That Into You AU

The Purest Love by MyJediLife for six4au

When a deeply scarred and traumatized Ben Solo is placed in a program to try and pair him with a canine helper, he finds that he gets more than he ever imagined with the therapist assigned to him.

The Monster in Skywalker Manner by datswatutink for solikerez

Rey marches up the walk, takes hold of the door knocker, and bangs it sharply three times. Nothing. She rattles the door handle. Nothing. Absurdly, she checks the address (is this the right creepy-and-probably-abandoned-Skywalker-Manner on Alderaan street?). It is. -Or- Rey takes a shady job to clean the old Skywalker Manner and discovers that there's something much scarier than dust and spiderwebs living there. But maybe that's not the whole story, because what kind of monster loves roses and books?

Stargazing by FangirlintheForest for SpaceWaffleHouseTM

“I wish they would go blind, stop whispering: he’s lying, he’ll leave. I hate that they know what I don’t want to hear. Their poison passes my lips, harmless. Call me Faith, not Medusa, no one need become stone.”

through the darkness to the dawn  by redbelles for starfleetjedi

She couldn’t breathe. Spots danced in her vision, black as the nothingness yawning behind her breastbone. Ben was gone. No. The plea tore out of her, wild and broken, racing through the vastness of the Force, past stars and planets and distant moons to the far edges of the universe. There was only silence. She tried again. Ben. Ben, please. Answer me. Or: Rey, after.

Tabula Rasa by Chthonia for suchlostcreatures (godfmischief)

Ben survives the battle on Exegol. That was the easy part.

Intro to Love by abbytheatre08 for TheStolenQuill

Rey and Ben are music students, put together to work on a final that, surprise isn't in a music class. They hadn't really known each other much before that but will that change as they keep working together?

I met you once — ( In a dream ) by persopilliankore for thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)

He sucks in a deep breath and exhales, a pout forming on his plump lips and it's so distracting the way they- "Just Ben," He closes his eyes. "see me no more than that, 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚." Or Where Ben and Rey are soulmates and Ben is more than meets the eye

Supernova by LueurdeLaube for Tiara_of_Sapphires

“She loved him so much she was going to smother him with it until there wasn’t a molecule of doubt left in his heart.” After the war Rey and Ben settle into an uneasy life of peace, followed by judgment and resentment. Ben Solo may have decided to remain behind to atone for his sins, but the people won’t forget Kylo Ren so soon.

Happy Accident by crossingwinter for tmf

A baby. Her baby having a baby. She’d given up dreams of grandchildren when Ben was fourteen, and not even his having a steady girlfriend had let her change her mind about it. “So yeah, we need to talk,” Rey mumbles at last. Ben doesn’t say a word, and Leia can imagine him clearly, sitting there, staring off into space, dazed—like when she’d told Han that she was pregnant.  One fun night at the Yub Nub Club and a little bit of carelessness with the condom... Not that she’d ever tell Ben that he’d been an accident.  He’d guessed it for years, but she’d go to her grave asserting he hadn’t been. “You want to keep it,” Ben says at last—a statement, not a question. — Or: Leia watches her son and his girlfriend prepare to become parents.

Crafting A Connection by LostInQueue for tmwillson3

Rey and Ben have been friends forever, so much so that Ben never dreamed that it something as small as getting that manager's position he'd been gunning for would get in the way of it. Now that it has, Rey's been distant. So... so distant and he has no idea how to get her back. Rey has only been trying to be a good friend and not use him for his status, which means instead of accepting rides from him like she had, she hasn't. She isn't trying to push him away but things are different, and he's difficult now. What on earth can she do about it? Mother nature has something to say about these two, that's for sure. The snow storm of the year is coming, stranding the two together the Friday before Valentine's Day weekend to give them the time to work things out.

this tangled light by hxllosweetie33 for TolkienGirl

The war is over, but at what cost?

Welcome to the Fire by KitsuShel for trasharama

Rey is competing on the reality television show, First Order Inferno, for a chance to become Head Chef at Benjamin Solo's latest restaurant. What happens when the competition gets a little too hot in the kitchen?

as certain dark things are to be loved by politicalmamaduck for tropixo (ursaminors)

Lady Rey, Master of the Knights of Ren, makes a choice. She chooses Ben Solo.

Bend or Break by Biekewieke for tweis24

It's been six months since the Battle of Crait. Both sides of the war have been continuing down their path, both sides struggling with loss. For some, it's just business. But for others, it's personal. For Rey of Jakku and Kylo Ren... it most certainly is personal. Once again, the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Jedi, Hope of the Resistance confront each other and clash. How will they react and what will transpire when Bonds are blocked and unexpected events are thrown their way? Will either of them bend? Or will they break?

Heaven, let me through by Crimson_Alchemistress for Twisted_Mirror

No matter how hard they try, they can't get each other out of their heads.

Osmosis by suchlostcreatures for viajeramyra

“I don’t need Ben Solo,” Rey states, rising from the throne. Her steps are slow and deliberate as she stalks towards him. “I need Kylo Ren.” Distantly, she notes the irony. And then she offers him her hand. ------ In which Ben doesn't reach Rey in time. (And the one time he does.)

Tell the World I'm Alive by Crysania for VirtualMadness

Rey returns to Exegol to retrieve all she has left of Ben Solo: his shirt. But what she finds there isn't at all what she expected to find. (Title comes from the song Who Will Save You Now by Les Friction. The lyrics are just so Reylo and it's a beautiful song.)

Sunset by reylotrash711 for Vivien

Rey has news. Ben has a question.

 Good Morning, Mrs. Solo  by Amy326 for walkingsaladshooter

Just a sweet one-shot about a really good morning for Ben and Rey. Modern AU.

After the End by ReyloBrit for witchsoup

Ambassador Organo-Solo is asked to attend a celebration to mark the anniversary of the end of the war, and is reunited with the woman whose life he saved. The woman he once loved.

getting the best of your opponent is easier if you smooch them first by persimonne for wombathos

A few months after the Battle of Crait, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren orders a ceasefire and asks to meet a delegation from the Resistance to negotiate the end of the war and the future of the Galaxy far, far away. But our heroes Finn and Rose notice straight away that their friend Rey is behaving strangely…

Borne Aloft by BensLostTookaCat (CJWritesAgain) for Xochiquetzl

A mysterious voice has called Rey to Tatooine after the death of Ben Solo and the defeat of the First/Final Order. Once she's there, a ghostly guide offers to take Rey through the Underworld to save Ben and return him to the world of the living.

You can view the other two masterposts for this exchange in this tag.

History Repeats | Chapter 1

Due to this not being posted anywhere else yet, please like and DON’T REBLOG my fics.

Chapter Summary:

Rose is horribly ill and exhausted after a bad day. She is surprised when she gets an unexpected visitor who tells her some interesting information and offers her a way to both cure her illness and get back to the Doctor.

Author Note:

Hello! Yet another one I have decided to rewrite. Never actually finished the original of this. I got to somewhere around World War III before I took a hiatus from it and came back a few years later and realised I wanted to update everything to do with it. I ended up both writing the new chapters at the same time as updating the old.

Visitor Through the Void

Dying to Go Home

Rose slowly dragged herself into her house, carelessly dumpling her things near the doorway, and flopping down onto the couch, not even bothering to take off her shoes or jacket. It had been a long, exhausting, and disappointing day. And she was in a lot of pain.

They were certain that the dimension cannon was ready to go this time. The mechanics had been checked a thousand times, and by all rights, it should work. But something was stopping it from working. It was like how after the breach had closed and the jump refused to work. This meant that she would only be able to get back home when the walls between the worlds were weak… and that wasn’t a good thing.

She wanted to go home more than anything, but if the walls weakened, it could only mean that something really bad was happening. And she had learnt the hard and heart-breaking way that not even the Doctor could stop everything.

 It had been just over a year since the painful day she had been trapped in this universe. A whole year of being broken in more ways than one. She’d tried… she really had. She did it for her family’s sake, and for Mikey’s sake, and mostly for her sake. She did it for the Doctor. Because she knew that he would want her to do what she was doing. She knew that she was better than that. She wasn’t just a broke shop girl anymore. They were all worried about her, so she had tried to act like she wasn’t slowly dying.

She had gone to work at Torchwood with Mickey and Pete. It was the closest thing she could get to her old life in this world, and it was also her only chance to get back. She had made a few friends and made an effort to hang out with them and be happy. She played with her new baby brother and spent time with her mother. She had even gone back to school and worked on her A Levels. She lived the fantastic life he had asked of her.

…Or, at least, she tried to live the fantastic life he had asked her to. But it didn’t feel fantastic. Or brilliant. Or anything other than horrible. Alright at best.

She felt as if her mind and heart were slowly being ripped apart. She felt empty like she was missing something inside of her. Some crucial part that she needed to live. Yes, she felt empty and broken from the loss of her Doctor… but it was something else too.

Sometimes she felt as if she were drowning, that her oxygen was being taken away, suffocating her. It was the same feeling, like her lifeline was slowly being dragged away from her. Killing her painfully and slowly. And it was only getting worse.

She was sick. Badly sick. She’d tried to hide it from her family, but they had noticed. They had noticed the fevers and deliriums. They had seen her have the occasional hallucination or seizure. They had seen how most days she was overcome by severe migraines that were at times so crippling she wanted nothing more than to curl in a ball and scream.

But still, she went on as best she could.

She had been to the hospital for scans and tests, but they had all shown nothing wrong with her. Medically anyway. They had noted that her brain scans and DNA seemed a little odd… inhuman. But they weren’t harmful. In the end, she had chalked it up to side-effects from travelling through space and time for years.

Grief could cause sickness. People had died of grief. They had given up, and it had overcome them… Her family thought that grief was the cause. But she knew it wasn’t. She was heartbroken, but she was too determined to let it beat her. People only died of grief when they gave up, and she had far from given up. She refused to. She was not going to give up until she found a way back home. She wouldn’t give up till she was with him again.

 But right now, she was so sick and so tired, the migraine that had been building all day so instead, she fell unconscious within moments of landing on the couch.

  Rose was woken by singing. At first, the song played at the edge of her mind, slowly dragging her back to consciousness. It was a familiar song, an eerie, haunting tune. She’d heard it a thousand times before. She knew it like the back of her hand, and she knew she had found herself absentmindedly humming it many times. But she couldn’t place where she knew it from.

The next thing she noticed was that she was feeling much better. She was able to breathe easier. Most surprisingly, her migraine was completely gone. She couldn’t recall the last time she hadn’t had even a slight headache, but she wasn’t in pain. She wasn’t in pain at all, which was something else she couldn’t recall the last time that happened. For the first time in a very long time, she felt whole again.

Sitting up, the third thing she noticed was a golden light coming from somewhere in the room. She looked over at the source of the light in surprise. It was dark now, probably sometime past one in the morning, and there was very little light shining into her house. So, the glowing cloud of golden dust like energy swirling around in the middle of the room was massively out of place.

She jumped to her feet in alarm, looking for something to defend herself if whatever it was was dangerous. She watched warily as the golden mass swirled through the air gently a moment, before it all started to be dragged towards the centre, pulling it all in so it clumped together, then, with a final flash, it formed into the shape of a woman.

The woman was glowing slightly, and she gasped as she came into being, then immediately fell to the floor. Rose quickly hit the lights, then rushed over to help her to her feet. But she stopped dead when she saw the woman’s face… it was her.

The other her looked younger than she did now, she could only be nineteen or twenty. Sure, to be honest, she hadn’t actually changed that much at all since then, but there was something about this Rose that seemed so young.

Most alarming, though, was that this other Rose had glowing gold eyes. And on top of that, she was wearing an outfit that had been destroyed long ago.

“Oh… that’s a new feeling,” the other her said, attempting to steady herself on her feet. Then she pulled a surprised face, almost as if she was startled by the sound of her own voice. She was still very shaky on her feet and almost fell over again, so Rose put out a hand to steady her. She had to catch her right away when the other her let out a sharp gasp and doubled over. “Oh, and it hurts! That really, really hurts!” she gasped. “How do you humans tolerate this? Just wait until I get my hands on that stupid Master… Wait… hands. I have hands.”

“O-okay…” Rose said in confusion. “Sorry, what’s going on?”

This made the other Rose look up at her, and her golden glowing eyes widened in delight as if she’d only just noticed her. “Rose!” she cried happily, throwing her arms around her. “Thank Rassilon, you’re still alive! I was so worried about you! Oh, you don’t look so good. I was cutting it close, but this was the first moment that the wall between the walls weakened. Goodness, this talking thing is fun! No wonder my Thief does it so much!”

Experimentally, the other Rose began to flex her jaw and pull funny faces.

“Right… So, who are you and why do you look like me?”

“Look like you?” Again, she brought her arms up in front of her and looked at her hands, turning them over as if she would see the resemblance, then she turned around until she managed to catch sight of herself in a reflective surface. Then she let out a small squeal of delight, bringing her hands up to feel her face, poking at the huge grin she found there. “I look like my human!” She, yet again, seemed ecstatic about this. Rose was baffled by the way the duplicate of her had practically claimed her, but it gave her the sense that she perhaps knew her.

“Yeah, you do. So, um… Who are you?”

“Oh, yes. I’m-” She paused as if she couldn’t quite remember. “Oh, what do you call me? You call me a name that’s not my name. I’m blue. We travel… I go-” Rose jumped a mile in the air when the familiar sounds of the TARDIS dematerialising came from the other Rose’s mouth.

“The TARDIS?!” she said in shocked disbelief.

“Yes! Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. That’s it! That’s me. I’m the TARDIS.”

Weakly, Rose backed up until her legs touched the couch and she sunk down onto it, her mouth hanging open slightly. “Oh my god… But-but how? How’s this possible? And how come you look like me?”

“Ooh! It’s quite simple, really,” the TARDIS told her. “There’s a crack in the universe that I was able to squeeze my consciousness through. But I couldn’t just -poof! – get a body. I needed energy and DNA and matter and a whole bunch of other things that would take longer than we have to list! Since you’re the only one who’s ever actually touched me and not just my console, yours was the only DNA I could use. It’s not permanent, though. It won’t last long. And I’m afraid I am terribly weak. I’m using what little energy I have left to do this-” Suddenly, she whimpered in pain and sunk to the ground. As she did, Rose quickly reached out and pulled her down onto the couch with her.

“Are you okay?” she said in alarm and concern. She held onto the Rose shaped TARDIS, running a hand over her head to check her temperature. She seemed normal, but there was clearly something wrong.

“I’ll be okay eventually,” she said, trying for a smile. It was a weak one that Rose knew all too well. She had given that smile so, so many times over the last year. It was how she smiled when she was trying to hide her pain from her family.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, just an insane Time Lord – and for once I do not mean the Doctor – has stolen me and turned me into a paradox machine.”

“Oh no. That’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t. But all will be well in the end… I hope. There are a lot of outcomes, but this is the Doctor. Besides, it’s worth it. The paradox has weakened the walls between the universes. It’s the only way I could get here, and I’m so glad that I did.” The TARDIS smiled at her, and this time it was a genuine one. “The Doctor and I can’t live without our human. We hate it. We’re so sad… And you feel the same. But you, Rose Tyler, literally can’t live without us… Or, well, me.

“Literally?” She raised her eyebrows in question. “What do you mean literally?” The words put her on edge, especially since she sensed just how true they were. But, despite the foreboding, she couldn’t bring herself to be anything but overjoyed and excited. The walls of the universe were weak. That meant that the Dimension Canon might be able to work finally. But to one-up that, the TARDIS herself was sitting there in her living room!

“You’ve already noticed it, haven’t you?” the TARDIS asked her. “Ever since I’ve been here, you haven’t felt quite as sick. And you’ve been sick for a long time now, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.” Rose nodded. “Started not long after Dårlig Ulv Stranden. It was mostly just… headaches. All the time. And then migraines. Sickness, seizures, dizzy spells and weakness. Mum was scared it was a tumour or something, but the tests all show nothing’s wrong.”

“No, I don’t imagine cellular destructuralisation would show on the technology here.”

“Cellular destructuralisation?”

“Yes, a side effect from being cut off from me, I’m afraid.”

“But… doesn’t that mean that I was… falling apart or something? Wouldn’t that mean I was dying?”

“Yes, yes it does. You’ve been studying!” The TARDIS smiled at her proudly.

“Before the sickness made me have to stop, yeah. H-how come I’m dying?” Really, she ought to be horrified by the idea, but she found she wasn’t exactly surprised.

“Well, you should have been dead already. You weren’t meant to live past the Game Station. You shouldn’t have been able to survive, holding the Time Vortex within you. Only I can do that. And you didn’t… survive, that is. You died, for a moment there anyway. But the Doctor and I, we both loved you so much. We couldn’t let you die. He gave up one of his regenerations to at least take the Time Vortex out of you. He hoped that he could save you, but he knew in his hearts that you would die. You held onto it for much longer than he did, and it killed him after only a few seconds of holding it. There was no way he could have saved you. And he didn’t want to go on like that without you.

He didn’t understand how you survived, it completely baffled him. Though, it did make him overjoyed. He thought that there must have been something very special about you. And he was right. Because no other human would have given up their life to save him like that. No one had ever won the heart of the TARDIS – my heart. And you did, Rose. I love you as much as he does… of course, not quite in the same way, but just as much. I couldn’t stand to see you die… to see the devastation it would cause him.

So, I bonded myself to you… I’ve never bonded to anyone before. Not the way we are. The Doctor and I are bonded. He’s my thief, my pilot, my Time Lord. When he dies, I die with him, but if I die, he will live on. Our bond… it’s both ways. We die when the other does. We can keep the other alive, or we can take them down as well. And with you in this universe, separated from us so completely. We may as well have been dead to one another. Our separation through the Void, it was slowly killing the both of us. I’m a little surprised you’ve lasted the year, but I’m glad. My Human is a fighter.”

“Okay, so… hold on, let me get this straight,” Rose said, holding up a hand to stay her. She could hardly comprehend what she was hearing. She felt as if her world had been flipped upside down by this revelation and her head was spinning. But at the same time, it just made so much sense. She’d always felt closer to the TARDIS after the Game Station, as if she could almost understand her. “So, I’ bonded to you… to the TARDIS, because I died from absorbing the Time Vortex. And because of the bond and being apart, we’re both dying. So, the only thing keeping me alive is being near you?”

“Yes, exactly!”

“S-so, are you taking me home then? Is that why you’re here? To take me back with you?” She couldn’t stop the hope creeping into her voice, but the TARDIS’s sad expression made it leave her in an instant.

“No.”

“No? But-”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I want to, but I can’t. I don’t have enough energy. And I wouldn’t be able to bring your physical form across the Void without killing you. Besides, you don’t want to go back to where I am. If the Master ever got his hands on you…” She shivered, her face going pale, and Rose had the feeling that she wasn’t just imagining the possibilities, but actually seeing them happen. “Not to mention that most of the outcomes where we all make it out okay, time reverses a year back to the moment I jumped through to here. You would suffer a year of torture and sickness only to be thrown back here to die once more. No, no, no. Not happening.”

“Yeah, no. I’d rather not.” At this point, she was kind of just sitting there stunned on the couch. She was trying to deal with the shock of what was happening, along with information overload, so at this point, she had decided to just roll with the punches. “But, isn’t there some other way? I-I can’t just stay here! Not if I’m just going to die! I’m working on something, a Dimension Cannon. It’s supposed to teleport you between dimensions, but it’s not an exact science of where and when you land. Also, I don’t think it works unless the walls of the universe are breaking down, and I probably don’t have time for that, do I?”

“No, I don’t imagine you would. But there is something we can do. We can stop it!”

“…Stop what?” Rose asked when the TARDIS didn’t elaborate.

“Canary Wharf. The separation. We can stop it from ever happening. You never leave our home universe. This timeline would cease to exist, and the three of us can continue travelling the stars. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS… as it should be.”

Rose’s eyebrows rose high. “What? How?! How would we do that?!” she said eagerly. She trusted the TARDIS beyond anything, the same as she trusted the Doctor. And it was a good thing that it was the TARDIS who was pitching her this idea because, at this point, she was willing to do anything to return to her home universe if it meant being with the Doctor in the TARDIS again. At times, she had even been willing to cause a paradox… Oh no. “It won’t cause a paradox, will it?”

The TARDIS smiled at her. “No, no it won’t. Paradoxes are caused when time is disrupted, but we won’t be disrupting it… we’re rewriting it. It will be a completely natural occurrence. See, the only part of you I can take back is your mind. And not only that, but the only way to ensure we don’t disrupt anything important is to take you all the way back… Back to the time you first stepped foot on the TARDIS.”

Rose started. “Wait, so I’m pretty much going to have to relive my life from after I first meet the Doctor? The whole two years?! …Or was it three?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But… but I can’t do that!” She shot to her feet and began pacing restlessly. “I can’t just… do it all again knowing what happens. I can’t do nothing when I have the chance help people I couldn’t before. I can’t let innocent people die! And what about me? Young me? Do I just… take over my own body. What happens to the old me?”

“Rose, calm down. It will all be fine,” the TARDIS tried to soothe her. “Trust me. You’re not going to take over your own body, more… merge with it. You’ll still be that same wonderful nineteen-year-old girl… but at the same time, you will also still be this brilliant woman you are now… Oh, I’m not explaining it right. This would be much easier if I wasn’t using words. How do humans explain things so easily all the time?” Rose just shrugged. In her experience, explaining things wasn’t always easy, even for people who did talk all their lives. “Hmm, well, you will see what I mean soon anyway. As for saving people you couldn’t before… that can certainly happen. Most of the time anyway.”

Rose stopped her pacing, and her eyes brightened. “Wait, really?! What about causing paradoxes?”

“Well, that’s like I said. We’re rewriting, not disrupting. You can change what you like, so long as it doesn’t change the timelines too much. There are still certain things that brought us to where we were, and we still need to keep all that the same. And there are certain events, the deaths of certain people that shape the history of the universe. But so long as it doesn’t affect those, you can save whoever you can. I would never ask you not to help people when you can.” Another smile touched her lips. She was so glad that her Rose hadn’t changed and was just as passionate. That her time here in the parallel word hadn’t hardened her or worse.

“But, how would I know if I was changing something important or not?” Rose asked, looking a little panicked. “What if I change something, and – and… we end up not going somewhere we’re supposed to go! Or the Doctor decides he wants to take someone else instead of me! What if I screw it all up?!”

“Rose, relax,” the TARDIS found herself laughing. Oh, she liked that. But seeing her Human so panicked over it was quite adorable. She had every faith that Rose would do this perfectly. “I’ll be with you in your head. I can help. Of course, you’ll have to figure most things out on your own, make your own choices. But I can send you mental nudges and hints. Besides, I’m not your only tool. We have a bond, you took on the entire Time Vortex… Haven’t you noticed it yet? That feeling that you know what will happen if you decide to do something.”

“Y-yeah,” she said, thinking back. “Almost like I’m… guessing what can happen before it does. Mum kept telling me I should get a lottery ticket. Course, Dad always told her that was silly since we’re kinda really incredibly rich here…”

“Yes, exactly. Our bond had started to change your mind before you left. Had you kept travelling, it would have changed even more.”

“Seriously?” The idea pulled her up short. So, what? She would have become… psychic?

“Oh yes!” The gleeful tone that the TARDIS used with her own voice was so reminiscent of the Doctor that it made Rose grin. “There’s a couple of other things too. The Doctor can’t know. I know you won’t like the idea, and I don’t overly like it either, but the Doctor can’t know about what you’re doing. The longer you can keep it from him, the better. I fear that if he finds out, he might end up changing things too drastically.”

“But… what if he figures it out? He’s not just going to not notice. It’s the Doctor.”

“Hmm, that is true. I suppose it might be alright, depending on what he finds out and when. Of course, I will try and hinder his attempts. Oh! One other thing!” Here, the TARDIS grinned one of Rose’s cheeky tongue in cheek smiles. “When he asks you to travel with him… turn him down again.”

Rose baulked. “Wait, what? Why?!”

“So that he asks twice, of course. He did it last time. He’s never asked anyone to travel with him twice like that before. Usually, he offers once with the occasional ‘you sure’, and that’s it. But he went back five minutes later and asked a second time. He wanted you to travel with him so badly, it’s no wonder he fell for you so quickly. He thinks about that a lot.”

“Oh.” Rose couldn’t help the butterflies that fluttered madly about every time the TARDIS told her that the Doctor loved her, or mentioned how much he cared. It soothed like a balm, especially when she thought back to his cut off words on the beach. There were still times, even now, even being so sure what he was going to say, that she doubted he could ever love her back. She was only human, after all… But, no. She was more than that. Not just because of the TARDIS, she had always been more than just that.

Only, now she would be able to live well beyond human years since she was bonded to the TARDIS in a way that not even he was. Her eyes suddenly lit up. She knew that that was one of the only barriers that ever stopped them from becoming more. He’d practically admitted as much the time she’d met Sara Jane. She would live as long as the TARDIS!

“Hold on!” she gasped. “So, you die when the Doctor does?”

“Give or take a few years,” she replied with a nod.

“And I live as long as you do…”

“Yes.” Now the TARDIS was grinning, knowing that she had caught on.

“I can live as long as he will…”

“As long as everything goes alright and nothing happens to either of us, yes. You will.”

“…Oh my god, I’m going to live for hundreds of years!” she cried. She’d vaguely known this when the TARDIS told her, but the implications were now only just hitting her.

“You won’t age,’ the TARDIS assured her. “Not past a few more years anyway.” Then she finally seemed to notice the overwhelmed expression on Rose’s face. “I’m sorry. I had to bond us. It was the only way. We couldn’t lose you.”

“Do I look like I’m complaining?!” she cried, a disbelieving laugh bubbling up from her. “I just… Oh god. I think I just need time to adjust to it, yeah. It sounds… insane.”

“No more so than anything else you’ve seen since you met the Doctor.” She sounded confused by Rose’s bafflement.

“Yeah, but… nothing I considered impossible ever really happened to me, you know? Not like that, anyway. Or, at least, I didn’t think I had.”

“Oh, Rose Tyler, you have no idea-” The end of her sentence was cut off as she let out another sharp cry, doubling over with her arms curled around her middle in pain. Rose rushed to her immediately. It had been so long since that had last happened that she’d completely forgotten the TARDIS was in pain. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” the TARDIS gasped, sitting back up straight.

“You sure?” she asked, holding her steady. “What’s happening?”

“I believe… we are running out of time. I can’t hold this form much longer before it breaks back down into energy. We need to go now.”

“N-now? But what about my family?” Rose asked. “Won’t they wonder what happened? I can’t just not say goodbye.”

“It won’t matter,” the TARDIS said, trying for a small, reassuring smile, though it looked far more like a pained grimace. “We will be – hopefully be – completely cutting this reality, this timeline from existence. With any luck, you will never fall and never had the need to say goodbye to them at this point in time. And you will see Jackie and Mickey very soon. But we must go now. If I don’t get you back, we both die.”

Rose nodded firmly. Hearing those words, she imagined how devastated the Doctor would be without her or his beloved ship, and her already pretty firm resolve hardened. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s do it. I want my Doctor back.”

The TARDIS smiled tiredly. She could practically taste her Human’s excitement, and that gave her the energy to pull them both to their feet.

“Good. Now, just remember, when you get back, we won’t be linked physically like we are now. Not until you absorb the Time Vortex again. But we will still be linked mentally. We can do this.”

Rose nodded, and the TARDIS placed her hands on her temples. She closed her eyes like she was concentrating, and Rose felt a harsh jolt in her mind as if she had just been shoved off a cliff…

And then she was gone.

Author Note:

As seems to be the rule with my rewritten scenes, this chapter almost doubled in length. From 2,404 to 4,691 words (4 → 8 pages). I was really proud of this update. Not just in my writing skills, but also in how I explained things a little clearer and made it flow nicer.

The original can still be read on fanfiction.net if you are interested to see how it’s changed.

Chapter Index  |  First Chapter  |   Next Chapter >>

“Why didn’t you let me know you were okay?” @flylikefalcon​

The immediate, true response was bitten back and swallowed back down to his stomach before it could slip out.  Because I wasn’t.  

He was luckier than some that came back, he knew.  Two of the other men in his truck had required amputations after the IED.  He’d seen plenty of injuries over his years in the service, men who were blown halfway to hell and left damn near unrecognizable.  He’d seen even more men who didn’t make it home at all.  

He knew all this.  But it hadn’t made him feel any better when the world was silent as a grave around him, and his leg fucking hurt, and more than anything he wanted to be back on the battlefield and not in a teal-toned hospital room day in and day out for almost a year.  It hadn’t made him feel any better knowing that things could’ve been worse when he’d been thrown back into civilian life with a monthly check from the government and discharge papers that declared that his skills were useless without the hearing he’d lost in the blast.  A great many days in that two years between the accident and Ra’s, he’d almost wished that he’d been left there in the sand rather than left in his island of an apartment with nothing but a check every month and ‘best wishes.’

But he hadn’t been left. A man with mechanical wings had scooped him up and carried him to the medical facility a mile and half away, and in the delirium of blood loss and brain damage, Tarik had almost been convinced the man was an angel.  

Sam Wilson, they’d told him later.  They’d given him an address, too, for the man’s deployment at the time, but at first he couldn’t think of what to say, and by the time Wilson’s deployment was supposed to be coming to a close, Tarik hadn’t felt grateful anymore.  He’d felt angry.  

With the benefit of nearly a decade put between then and now, his perspective had warmed considerably.  So instead of telling the truth, Tarik offered the lie the man deserved to hear.  “I sent a letter on my last day of PT.  They told me you’d already shipped back by then.  You’d be surprised how many Sam Wilsons there are in the United States, flyboy.”  

we hope you’ve all had a great weekend thus far, but to top it off for you guys - we're releasing ANOTHER PREVIEW today! below is our neighborhoods / boroughs. waverly has six personalized locations, any of which you’ll be able to choose as your character’s stomping grounds. they all contrast each other in many ways (social class, aesthetic, businesses or lack thereof) so we’re sure there will be a place best fitting for your characters! i’m gonna stop blabbing now and get on with it okay? okay.

BYWATER

louisiana’s largest body of water, lake pontchartrain, flows right into waverly’s backyard and is an estuary connected to the gulf of mexico. if you were wondering where the somewhat swampy landscape comes from, this is it. have a pontoon or even a yacht that needs a parking space? eastpoint harbor should fit all your boating needs! to the west of the harbor, you’ll find bradbury beach - which is less of a beach and moreso a small portion of the shore that isn’t just mud and tall grass. however, it isn’t recommended that visitors stay past sundown, which is when the merfolk pods are most active - and deadly. despite the many dangers lurking in this particular area, some choose to live lakefront in the small neighborhood situated by the coast.

CYPRESS GROVE

as lowly and run-down as waverly may seem, it isn’t without its very own hub of old money. the town’s founding fathers owned many of the plantations situated in cypress grove - some sporting rather modern renovations and others succumbing to the rest of the town’s decay. the latter, no matter how abandoned and rickety, remain a piece of waverly’s history and are owned by the bank - making them private property. some have been preserved, serving as museums of sorts in an effort to educate the town of the very founding fathers that built them. there is one, however, that the general population tends to avoid completely - orville plantation. the orville’s were devoutly catholic up until the day they all mysteriously died in the summer of 1932. The youngest daughter was said to have suffered a demonic possession, the last effort at an exorcism going horribly wrong. Unless you’re a particularly brave ghost hunter or harboring a morbid death wish, you’d be better off skipping a tour of the supposedly haunted estate as well - if you believe in that type of thing. on the opposite end of the spectrum, devout churchgoers will fit right in at epiphany church, the largest waverly has to offer. lastly, the cypress grove country club serves as much of the neighborhood’s entertainment where there’s sure to be some high class party going on at all times.

HOLLOW CREEK

waverly is no stranger to wooded areas. in fact, if there’s anything this town has an abundance of - it’s trees. however, no pocket of forestry runs deeper than hollow creek. located to the east of lake pontchartrain, hollow creek runs along the southern edge of the town, cradling it in a grasp of impenetrable darkness. there’s a rumor among waverly citizens that keep most people out of the woods’ clutches. legend has it that the deeper one finds themselves venturing into hollow creek, the less likely they are to return. many missing persons cases have run cold in waverly and most of them have one thing in common - the last known location being none other than hollow creek. despite its shudder inducing reputation, the area comes complete with an actual campsite. cabins (available to rent or own) varying in sizes are situated a mile into hollow creek road and encompass only five percent of the northern section of the woods. multiple trails will satiate any hiker’s needs and a number of random creeks and brooks provide visitors with the option to swim or kayak. don’t forget to stop by the general store on your way in - it might be a good idea to come to hollow creek well prepared.

THISTLETHORN

perhaps the most lively borough in waverly, thistlethorn provides most of the town’s entertainment. if you aren’t the outdoorsy type, chances are you’ll find yourself here when the boredom of small town life starts to rear its ugly head. sure, it’s no vegas strip, but thistlethorn gets the job down well enough. If you’re looking to get some retail therapy, belleridge center serves as the town’s shopping district complete with a couple of clothing stores, a pharmacy, the local hair salon, and one of those new age boutiques that most people glare at as they pass by. down the road, you’ll find rusty’s karaoke bar which is mostly family friendly before nine pm. not big on the whole singing thing? Come by The Lodge, Waverly’s largest bar that’s situated just a mile further. Take your friend’s money over a game of pool or take your chances on the mechanical bull. Then if you're feeling particularly adventurous, a few miles down the road on a patch of earth that shares boundaries with the eerie Hollow Creek there's a demon bar called Delirium that caters to the supernatural residents of Waverly. Humans are welcome, but should tread lightly. If you thrive in the nightlife scene, you most likely live in the nearby neighborhood where Thistlethornians sleep soundly to the off-key vocals humming in the night air.

VINECREST

vinecrest is waverly’s most populated borough, housing most of the town’s lower-middle to middle class citizens. perhaps the most family friendly neighborhood to raise children, vinecrest holds the public school district as well as the public library and the town hall. you’ll also find fernview park, where the kids can play on the jungle gym while you walk the dog or lounge on a bench to read a book. a baseball field and duck pond are also featured, you know, if you aren’t five. additionally, if you’re a person of faith like most of waverly’s inhabitants, come by the southern baptist church and join the tightly knit community. they’re sure to welcome you with open arms - if you’re willing to fully repent your sins, that is. lastly, and likely waverly’s most frequented eatery, is the shady nook diner. mostly referred to as simply ‘shady’s’, the decently sized restaurant serves all the best comfort food twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. so grab your pals and your favorite corner booth and stay awhile!

WESTGATE

as you venture toward the western perimeter of the town, you’ll find that the decay has only worsened. situated on the outskirts of waverly, westgate seems to have been long forgotten. the structures have fallen into disrepair and one would mistake it for a ghost town if it wasn’t for the nearby pleasant acres trailer park that serves as low income housing. along with other rundown homes sprinkled throughout, you’ll also find old pine cemetery. the groundskeeper hasn’t kept the place well maintained in years, thus leaving visitors spooked for days and less likely to return. lastly, on the corner of the main road, you’ll find hair of the dog. this seedy motorcycle dive bar is a little more than it may seem to someone on the outside - and one would be wise to steer clear of the place unless the owner knows you by name.

😗Scarecrow Junkrat trying to beckons his S/O into the cornfields?

Love me some fuckin Southern Gothic.

Junkrat:

You hated walking to work. It was always there.

The long dirt path was the only way you could travel the distance from the gas station you worked to your home, both of which resided in the south-western portion of nowhere. Every weekday you made the hour-long trek to work, stuck between two massive walls of untended corn on either side of you. And, of course, the scarecrow.

Whenever you travel this beaten path, he would walk beside you. You thought it was human, at least at first. Maybe a prankster; A plain creep. However, it became quickly apparent through his too-thin limbs and gangly stature that this creature was a cheap imitation of a human being. You stopped calling out to him when he wouldn't respond. You stopped trying to interact with it at all.

The more you stared at his silhouette, the more you realized his sack hood seemed to be filled with some material other than muscle and bone. His torso seemed human enough, but littered with scars that didn't look healthy in the least bit. If this was a man he was a monster, and if he wasn't, he was a walking nightmare.

The most unsettling thing about him were his eyes. Glass tubes, a fluorescent orange that glowed with no discernable source. They followed your every move as you walked beside him. They moved on their own, further disproving your theory of a elaborate costume, and always seemed to stay steady despite how he twitched. This scared you more than anything else about him.

You had no solution. There was nothing you could do and no other way you could travel. You knew nobody would believe you if you told them your tale. You’d already tried, and whenever you managed to convince someone to pick you up, he was never there. You looked like a lunatic. Helpless to prove yourself, you were left to your own terror.

Your only solace was in the fact that he never seemed to leave the corn. He would walk alongside you, matching your brisk pace, but he’d never get closer or approach you directly. From that distance, you could almost ignore him if you just looked forward. That 10-foot gap was the only comfort you had.

Yet, you weren't sure when that would change. He certainly had interest in you, and if he wasn't leaving you alone, something was bound to happen eventually. Maybe even if you weren’t so stupid as to step foot into that cornfield. You didn't want to be around when that happened. Ignoring him wasn't going to work forever.

Unfortunately, your crappy job didn’t allow you to save much, making moving away an impossibility. You were scrounging together for a car from what little you saved over from your paycheck each week, but it was practically nothing. You were trapped with nobody to believe you and nobody for miles around who can save you, should that invisible barrier between the field and the road ever fall.

~~~

Was he walking closer today? The presence of him was a bit stronger, the sound of his footsteps is a tad louder in your ears. You didn't want to stare directly at him, terrified it would destroy your carefully constructed barrier of denial. Yet when you listened, you could hear words muttered beneath his wheezy breath, far too indistinct to make out.

You were getting a little too paranoid to wait.

You sped up, attempting to somehow close this hour long distance in a minute. You were aware that all you were doing was tiring yourself out faster. After all, you could hear the punch of his peg leg against the hard dirt just beside you. He was matching your pace easily.

As always, the narrow fields opening up to flat grass is like the gates of paradise. Your work was just around the corner, your respite away from this hell road. It was the only reason you were happy to see it. Your lungs felt ready to burst from your jog.

When your foot moved from dirt to gravel, your shadow finally tails off.. You turned back in time to see him disappear once again into the field, likely awaiting your return to stalk you all the way back to your home. You had never actually seen him walking around at night, but you felt his eyes on you every minute, without fail. He was out there, always, without fail.

You shook off the feeling of bugs crawling on your skin, and turn back to the road completing the remaining 2 minutes to your work.

For a gas station, seeing cars out front doesn't surprise you. The placement of this one, on the other hand, caught your eye. It was ugly, a rusty white buick that was obviously on its last legs. You wondered if the thing even worked. Though, to be fair to it, it looked in place in front of an old derelict gas station like this one. You must have been staring longer than you thought because your co-worker called out to you.

“ She runs, if that's what you're wondering,” he told you, exhaling a large puff of cigarette smoke. You turned around to face him, trying not to seem too interested.

“ Are you selling it?”  you asked. He nodded and gestured towards the car with a nod of his head.

“ 800 dollars. A steal really. I just need the money.” Your heart nearly stopped. You had just about that much money in your savings. You tried to stop yourself; A car was not a thing to impulse buy.  Yet one more look at the beatdown thing, knowing that it worked, you were standing in front of your ATM before you knew it.

“ You sure about this?”  Your coworker asked, watching you pull money with just the slightest bit of concern. “ Sure you don't want to consult nobody?”

“ I need a car that works,” you told him, plugging your card in to repeat another transaction. You met his eyes, and you briefly considered that you might look crazy. Briefly. “If yours works, then I want it.”

“...This isn’t about that scarecrow thing, is--”

“Greg.” The finality in your voice shut him up. He shook his head and let his thoughts trail off in his own head. After a wad of twenties was exchanged between hands,  you were the owner of a rusty jalopy and it's matching key.

“ I guess if you're that eager, you won't run off when I tell you what's wrong with it.”  he scratched the back of his head and make a twirling gesture with his finger. “Tires need to be replaced, brakes are a little touchy, obviously needs some more paint, brake lights are shot, roof needs to be patched, and-- well I'm sure the mechanic will tell you everything else when you bring it to him.”

With that reassuring sign off and a pat on the shoulder, your coworker walk back to his station in the deli, leaving you with the key in your hand. Your doubts start to catch up with you and you wonder if it does truly run like he claims it does. You doubt he would lie to you, but just how many more miles does that thing have left in it?

   However, delirium didn't reason like that. By the time you closed the station that night, you were ready to fire it up and drive. You barely even paused to rip the price sticker out of the window before pulling yourself into the driver’s seat and closing the door. A two-ton cage of steel protecting your body, travelling at 40 miles per hour. You might as well have been in a tank for how protected you felt.

You turned the key in the ignition and placed your hands on the wheel. The feeling of the old car sputtering to life eased your pounding heart to a dull purr, just like the engine. He had never shown up when you were in a car. Even if this car only lasted you a month, it would still be worth the freedom from his terrible gaze. Maybe he’d lose interest.

  You didn't move for a long time, simply cherishing the armor you now had. You didn't need anyone else to believe you. Not when you had your own defense. You tore off into the night, swinging around the corner and down the dirt path that had become your hell. The gas gauge read half-full, and save for its appearance both inside and out, it ran well enough.

Today was your lucky day.

What was normally an hour long walk would be bypassed in minutes on your new wheels. The corn was breezing past, and with no sign of your tormentor. You didn’t expect to see him; he hid better at night. How he hid the bright glow where you couldn’t see, you’d never understand.

You hoped he saw you now. Saw that you could outpace him, that he was no match for you now that you were protected. You wanted him to know that you would no longer be his victim, allowing him to stalk you every time you walk past. You wouldn't have it anymore. You felt invincible.

 You were about half-way through the field when the engine started to choke. The sound of gears clacking against each other overwhelmed everything, even the pounding of blood in your ears. You went to press your foot to the break but paused, realizing where you were. If you could just push it for another minute, maybe you could pull over outside of the corn where he wouldn't be able to get you.

You realized, as your foot tilted back towards the accelerator, that your fear it may have been irrational. You had never seen him at the night. Yet still, just the chill of the night air was enough to rattle your bones, and if you turned off your car and weren't able to get it back on again, you'd be trapped out here, which wouldn't ease your paranoia any.

Anxious to remove yourself from the situation as fast as possible, you pressed down on the gas. The clanking grew louder, making sweat bead on your forehead. The car jolted, nearly throwing you out of your seat and nearly choking you on your seatbelt. Then, exactly as you feared, the engine roared to a halt.

“Oh, shit. Come on. come on. Come on!” You turn the key in the ignition rapidly but nothing caught. You watch helplessly as your car begins to roll to a gradual stop, the speed meter slowly ticking closer to 0. “Runs fine” your ass. You were going to bitch your coworker out the next time you saw him.

You looked up, watching your headlights flicker. You knew opening your door would turn them off, and you needed the light. You were ready to start rolling the window down when you noticed lights flickering in the distance.

You squinted, one hand on the wheel and the other on your door handle. You realized too late how familiar that fluorescent orange was until his gangly silhouette was slowly revealed by your approaching headlights.

He was standing in the middle of the road. You pressed yourself as far back into the seat as you could, nearly breaking it in the process, but nothing stopped the car from getting closer. Not until the speedometer hit a solid zero, your bumper coming to a halt inches from his legs.

He was terrifyingly huge up close. You had never realized how tall he was when he was at a distance. Or how great that distance was, for that matter. You were frozen in place, staring at him and waiting for something to happen. He seemed to be doing the same.

Then, without warning, your headlights cut out, drowning you in black. Your fingers clenched on the door handle but didn’t move. You were blind, unable to see anything save for his glowing eyes. You were waiting for them to do something, anything besides stare at you.

All was still for a long while, long enough for your chest to hurt from your pounding heart, for your eyes to become adjusted to the dark just enough to see his form. Slowly he slouched over, falling to a height you were more familiar with seeing, and the eyes slowly bobbed back and forth, circling around the car to the drivers side.

Panic seized your lungs again, and the drum in your heart began to beat anew. You ripped your seatbelt off, prying your fingers beneath the center console and ripping it up. You had dived half-way across the seat when a tiny knock stopped you in your tracks. You glanced over your shoulder, and his face was pressed against the windows, eyes sunken back into his sack head.

He said nothing, merely made a little twirling motion with his finger. Roll the window down.

Fat fucking chance. You reached out and grabbed the handle of the passenger door, hauling yourself to the other side of the car. The window shattered behind you, and you felt fingers swipe through your hair once before you threw the door open and rolled out. The car shifted behind you, glass crackling and hitting the ground as the creature thrashed and roared.

You pulled yourself to your feet and ran. The road no longer felt safe; now that you knew he could travel it after all. Now it was just open ground, able to be spotted from a mile away. Ignoring your every survival instinct cultivated from months of this psychological torture, you burst through the first row of corn and began to cross through.

Your lungs were already pulsing, so they were downright burning after moments of running. Yet every time you even tried to slow down, you’d hear the sound of wood hitting dirt and redouble your efforts, hand clenching the massive cramp in your abdomen. The corn gave way to dry grass, but you didn’t slow any, continuing on even as the ground began a slow incline.

The hill crested almost suddenly, the drop so steep it practically disappeared from under you. You lost your footing and tumbled forward, hitting the dirt on your right arm and flying down the hill so fast you felt like you were going to be sick. Twigs and rocked scraped your skin as you passed, but nothing so major as the ankle you twisted on an errant root, rendering your left leg useless.

You hit the bottom of the hill with a grunt, all of the air forced out of your lungs. You were a mess. You cracked your eyes open through the thin layer of dirt that had accumulated over your skin and blinked out the tears that welled in the corners. You had a feeling that the only reason nothing hurt is because your body hadn’t yet had time to process how much you hurt.

Your surroundings were still dark, but recognizable, nothing but grass and dead bushes as far as you could see. A shadow loomed over you, but when you looked up, you were shocked to find it wasn’t the scarecrow, but a massive wooden post staked down in the dirt just past your head. The crucifix-esque pattern sent a bolt of fear through you, which awakened your nerves to your budding pain.

“Home sweet home.” You wanted to crawl away from the voice, recognizing it instantly as sinister and inhuman, but your body wouldn’t move. You could only bring your eyes to stare at his looming silhouette, what looked like nails clenched between the fingers of one hand and a coil of rope in the other.

“Hold still.”

Aunt Edith [mf]

I was living in Glasgow, Montana in nineteen and forty-one when I got the letter in March. The address was from Wild Turtle in North Dakota, from a woman with my same last name. I opened it and read it, and was not surprised to find that the woman was my aunt, writing me because my uncle had fallen through the ice while fishing in December and died. When he died he had left me a few odds and ends, and since he had no children of his own, he gave me the first offer to take over work at a mechanic shop he owned in that town. I wrote back telling the woman to expect me, and I took care of some odds and ends around Glasgow and sold my house. Growing up in the depression, I had learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth, if old Uncle Walt was going to offer me my own business and a way to earn my living, then I’d be a fool to turn it down.

With my belongings in a handful of trunks and the money from my account and the sale of my house in hand, I took the night train from Glasgow to Minot, then took a branch line the next morning through the flat state to Wild Rose. It was just past three in the afternoon when I got off, and I didn’t want to stop in too late. I spent the night in a hotel in Wild Rose, and the next morning I paid a man to drive me the five miles or so up the road north to my destination. Wild Turtle was a quiet town, considerably smaller than Glasgow, but the people were friendly and the inn had plenty of empty rooms. Once I had settled my bags and changed my clothes, I dug out the envelope and the letter Edith had sent me, and I made my way to her house a mile east of the city hall, close to the pond where the turtle that named the town had lived. It was an awkward walk up to her door from the road. I had never really been around death much as I grew up, and I had never dealt much with a widow.

My hand knocked firmly on the door in the cool morning. I heard a dog bark from inside, and some footsteps and a floorboard creak. The woman who opened the door was in her late fifties, had black hair turning grey, and startling blue eyes, She was dressed plainly and looked rather tired, but it had been a long winter for all of us, and longer still for her.

“Good morning ma’am,” I said, tipping my hat, “I’m Martin Iverson, your nephew.” She gave me a sad but warm smile as she pushed the door wider and a golden retriever sniffed at me.

“Son, in this house we don’t call family ‘ma’am’, Edith is fine.” she said, “Why don’t you come in and I’ll get you some coffee.” I told her I appreciated the offer and I followed her into the house, hanging my hat up as the dog begged for my attention. I patted the dog with pleasure as I followed Edith to the dining room where she directed me to have a seat at an old table that was worn and had seen happy decades of use. I waited patiently and soon she returned with cups of steaming coffee and an offering of finger food for us to share as we spoke. I did not press the matter that had brought me. Edith had gone through much over the winter and there was no need to seem greedy. Her and I spoke for a long time about my Uncle Walter, and she could not help but point out how much I looked like him. It was a comment I could only shrug off, but from time to time she would look at the dog lying at my feet and she would seem to wonder that the mutt had taken kindly to me.

It was nearing noon when the topic of business came to the table. Edith left me briefly to find the paperwork and keys and she returned to the table. I read through what was brought and signed where I needed to for her lawyer to give to me my new shop. I took the keys and thanked her once more for the kindness and quality conversation she had given me. We spoke further and as I prepared to leave to inspect my new shop, she stopped me. She asked where I was staying, and when I told her, she seemed offended. Immediately she offered her spare bedroom, and I fought hard to not impose, but she won the battle and I agreed to return that night and join her in the home. And as I turned to leave once more, she asked if I knew how to drive an auto. I told her I did and she said she did not, and she told me to take Walter’s one-ton Ford truck, that it did her no good rotting in the yard.

I drove the truck first to the inn and I paid for my room and put my trunks in the bed, then I drove to the east side of mainstreet where Sven’s Engine was located in a barn-like building on the north side of the road. I pulled in with the truck and admired the sign that was painted with a snapping turtle. I had heard the history of Wild Turtle once before and the snapper depicted on my new shop was named and likely painted in honor of the vile creature who had inadvertently led to the founding of the town when he bit off the finger of one of the founding brothers. I couldn’t help but smile at the nod to the absurd history of the town. My musings and smilings were soon interrupted when the door opened and a redskin stepped out to ask me what I was doing with Walter’s truck and in front of Walter’s shop. I introduced myself to the standoffish native, and I told him why I was there. After a few minutes of discussion, I told him I would keep him hired on at the shop and would give him a dime an hour raise if he taught me the trade. He accepted and a friendship was born.

For the rest of that spring and summer, I lived with my aunt Edith and drove the one-ton, and worked in my turtle honoring shop. Life was quiet but steady. Walter had bought a Ford two truck in thirty-eight, and I put it to good use making house calls and rescuing farmers in the mud during the thunderstorm season of early summer. For summer my life grew better and I had saved up a good piece of money and was looking to purchase land or a home of my own in the small town, but Edith talked me out of the idea. She was aging and she liked the company as she didn’t work and she liked the safety of having a young man in her home to help her with the duties of maintaining the house. Uncle Walter had worked hard to make sure his wife never wanted for anything and had lived like a princess, and indeed the only heavy lifting she did was in the garden. The only thing she had missed out on was having a child, hence her strong desire to keep me around. It was of no concern to me though. I enjoyed the company of my dear old aunt and I enjoyed filling in as her surrogate son. When winter fell, times got hard for the old girl. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was the worst time for her, as it was about that time that Walter had left for his fated fishing trip. Often during the snowy months of November and

December she would knit in the sitting room and when I walked in from work or duties around the property she would half jump through her skin with excitement when I walked through the door, and she would look at my face, a young mirror of Uncle Walter, and for half a second I could see the love and happiness in her eyes as she saw him, but her heart would break soon enough when she remembered I was not him. It was heart-shattering for me as well. Edith was a kind old woman and I couldn’t stand to see her so torn up. It was easy to see that she still expected Walter to walk through that door at any moment, and for some reason that left me with a deep feeling of guilt.

The months passed into years and as the world once more went to war the draft passed me over and I stayed in Wild Turtle working to keep the local farms operating smoothly, feeding the country and our soldiers. In the winter of forty-two Edith once more seemed to sit and wait for Walter, something subconscious forcing her to do so as if she could not let his memory slip away and rest as it should. Perhaps it was me, for I watched the way she would look at me, and her recognition of something in my face seemed to last longer this year than it did the year before. I spoke about it with my Indian companion from time to time, hoping he would have some tribal wisdom to impart with me on the matter, and he would shrug and suggest that because Walter’s body was never found his spirit still wandered, and something in Edith seemed to pick up on the wanderer’s energy.

It was in the winter of nineteen and forty-four that Aunt Edith began to slip further. She was getting old and the strain of her years was wearing on her. She began to forget things, small things, and it went unnoticed at first. Sometimes she would lose knitting needles she had just set down, other times she would stand in the door and call in a dog who she had already let into the house. One night she made dinner, as usual, then seemed to forget she had after cleaning up and attempted to make me a second meal. It was at that point that I convinced her to ride with me in the one-ton to Wild Rose to talk to the local doctor, who recommended us to an alienist in Crosby. Within a week the grim-faced doctor was telling me that Aunt Edith had begun to show signs of Alzheimer's and she would descend into delirium before insanity and death. Edith, for her part, was lucky enough to forget the diagnosis the next day, and I did nothing to remind her. I vowed to myself to live with my aunt and keep her comfortable for whatever time she had left.

January of forty-five was when something happened that I had feared. She had often commented on how much I looked like my Uncle Walter, and she had her habit of waiting for him to come home on cold snowy days. It was one of those days when I came home from my work in the auto shop and she looked at me with her recognizing eyes and she saw how the dog loped over to greet me, and she did not realize that I was not Walter. She stood and greeted me as if I was her husband, and I was left with a difficult decision to make.

Some may call me cruel or sick, but I went along with her. For the rest of her life, I was Walter in her eyes. Due to her condition, we did not go much into public together and her friends were all equally old and had issues of their own for them to manage, so largely, we were left alone. For years I let her think I was her dead husband, and I acted as if I was. It was in nineteen and fifty that she died, and now that she is dead I feel it is time to fully explain why I acted as I did.

Edith had recognized me day in and day out for every day since I first appeared at her doorstep, for she had seen my face in nineteen and eighteen when I stepped off the train in Wild Rose after coming home from the Great War. At that age, we had started a life together, a life we lived out in Wild Turtle as a happily married couple. Years passed and she aged but I didn’t. I worked with makeup and paints to appear as if I was aging as she was, but I knew I could not keep it up. Despite my age and the passing years, I had not aged a day in body.

When it became too difficult to look my age, I faked my death and set it to look as if I had fallen through the ice while fishing. My body was never found, and my will left my shop to a false man I had created in preparation for the ruse. I knew that my wife would be quick to accept a supposed nephew into her home, and I would be able to live once more with the woman I loved with all my heart. The day she recognized me in forty-five, I knew that she knew my secret. There was no sickness or confusion in her eyes that day. She had found me once more and used her sickness as a cover to let us once more live the life we had before.

The day she died, I was forced to make myself look ten years older than the day I came to Wild Turtle. I buried my fourth wife, another dead of old age. I don’t know why I continued to torture myself with this cycle, but I imagine I’ll do it once more because I crave the taste of love, as we all do. Perhaps with my next wife, I’ll share the secret taught to me by Joseph Curwen in his lair outside of Providence while I was his student.

Two thousand four hundred ten word short story by Aerrik Hovden, 20JULY2020

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Dementia Sometimes Starts In A Hospital's ICU : Shots – Health News : NPR

Dementia Sometimes Starts In A Hospital’s ICU : Shots – Health News : NPR

Enlarge this image Richard Langford, at home in East Nashville, Tenn., still has significant trouble with mental focus and memory issues 10 years after a sudden and serious infection landed him in the hospital ICU for several weeks. Morgan Hornsby for NPR hide caption toggle caption Morgan Hornsby for NPR Richard Langford, at home in East Nashville, Tenn., still has significant trouble with mental focus and memory issues 10 years after a sudden and serious infection landed him in the hospital ICU for several weeks. Morgan Hornsby for NPR Doctors have gradually come to realize that people who survive a serious brush with death in the intensive care unit are likely to develop potentially serious problems with their memory and thinking processes. This dementia, a side effect of intensive medical care, can be permanent. And it affects as many as half of all people who are rushed to the ICU after a medical emergency. Considering that 5.7 million Americans end up in intensive care every year, this is a major problem that until recently, has been poorly appreciated by medical caregivers. Take, for example, the story of Richard Langford, a retired minister in his 60s who lives with his mother in East Nashville. He went into the hospital for knee surgery 10 years ago “because I was playing tennis with an 85-year-old and he beat my butt,” Langford says with a chuckle. “So I wanted fresh knees to help me play better.” Shots – Health News How To Prevent Brain-Sapping Delirium In The ICU But after that routine knee surgery, Langford developed a serious lung infection that sent him to the intensive care unit. He had sepsis, a life-threatening condition sometimes called blood poisoning. With sepsis, the body overreacts to an infection; it can lead to crashing blood pressure, multiple organ failure and often death. During his four-week stay in the hospital and the rehab that followed, Langford suffered from long spells of delirium . That’s a state of muddled thought, confusion and even at times hallucinations in some patients. All Langford remembers is the sensation of a near-death experience. “I saw green grass,” Langford says, “and I saw, on the other side of the river, it looked like there was Elijah,” the prophet whose miracles included resurrection. His mother Leta says that at one point, members of the hospital staff were so sure he would die overnight that they didn’t even bother to pass on his medical chart to the day shift. Why Do ICU Patients Get Delirium? Though the causes of delirium still aren’t completely worked out, and may be multiple in a particular case, a website put together by the team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for patients and families says you can think of delirium as being “caused by a change in the way the brain is working.” The website cites a number of factors that might be contributing to that change: •The brain’s inability to use oxygen •Chemical changes in the brain •Certain medicines •Infections •Severe pain •Medical illnesses •Alcohol, sedatives, or pain killers •Withdrawal from alcohol, nicotine “The thing that’s amazing is his talking to us — and his being aware of what we were saying — and yet not knowing or not remembering any of that,” she says. Nearly a decade later, Richard Langford says he is still struggling to work his way out of a thicket of deficits that are physical, emotional and cognitive. Though he still subscribes to The New Yorker and remains active in political causes, he periodically feels like he’s lost in what looks and seems to him — at least in those moments — to be a vast forest inside his mind. “The water is big, there are waterfalls, and there are all kinds of animals around,” he says. “That forest is kind of surrounding me and I can’t get out. I don’t know how to get out.” Langford also finds himself confused and distracted — lost in thought and losing track of basic tasks, such as when to take the medicines he has been prescribed to treat his heart disease and other lingering health issues. His 89-year-old mother now has to help him with his medication schedule. Neuropsychologist James Jackson, of the Vanderbilt ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group, says these cognitive problems are the result of Langford’s struggle with delirium in the hospital. Vanderbilt Medical Center now has a clinic that is pioneering efforts to understand and treat these sorts of cases. “This is a huge problem,” says Dr. E. Wesley Ely , an intensive care specialist who heads that effort. He says post-ICU syndrome — a cluster of cognitive symptoms that can include anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as delirium — affects 30 to 50 percent of all patients who are rushed to the ICU because of a medical emergency. That’s including younger patients who had no prior mental challenges. And in some of those patients, dementia soon follows. Enlarge this image Dr. E. Wesley Ely specializes in pulmonary critical care medicine as a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. His research focuses on helping patients who have ICU-acquired brain disease. Morgan Hornsby for NPR hide caption toggle caption Morgan Hornsby for NPR Dr. E. Wesley Ely specializes in pulmonary critical care medicine as a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. His research focuses on helping patients who have ICU-acquired brain disease. Morgan Hornsby for NPR “You have somebody coming into the ICU with a previously very well-working brain, and they leave critical care not being able to have a good conversation,” Ely says. “They can’t balance their checkbook, they can’t find the names of people at a party and they get very embarrassed, so they start socially secluding themselves. Our patients tell us what a misery this form of dementia is.” Ely has been tracking his patients for more than a decade through scientific studies such as the BRAIN-ICU study . He says about one-third of patients who have cognitive problems after their ICU stay fully recover, another third stay about the same after their dementia sets in, and a third continue to go downhill. For many, the damage to mental processing is akin to what’s seen with a traumatic brain injury, in a condition called mild cognitive impairment — or even with Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers don’t yet know how the brain is changing to give rise to these symptoms or how extended delirium leads to that brain damage; Ely is launching a large study to help tease out some of those mechanisms. What parts of the brain are affected, and how does the damage differ from that caused by other forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s? One idea he will explore is whether tiny blood clots might be forming in the brain and playing a role the long-term damage. In the meantime, Ely says, one thing the doctors treating these patients with sudden dementia are certain of is that their mental problems are linked to the degree of delirium they experience while in the ICU. “Every day you’re delirious you have about a 35 percent increased risk of this dementia,” he says. “So if you do the math on that — [after] three days of delirium, you have almost a sure thing you’re going to have some elements of the dementia.” And the problems don’t stop there. “Unfortunately a lot of these patients and their family members have depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and cognitive impairment,” says Joanna Stollings , a clinical pharmacist and member of the interdisciplinary team that staffs the clinic. But there is a bit of good news for patients who seek help: Many of these other conditions are treatable, Stollings says — especially the anxiety and depression. People can find help with talk therapy, Stolling says, and “sometimes, if it’s appropriate, we can put them on medications, which can help with this as well.” Jackson, the neuropsychologist at the clinic, says rehabilitation for these patients can resemble the therapy prescribed to people after a stroke. “Even though these patients haven’t been hit on the head with a hammer [and] they haven’t fallen off a ladder, in many respects what people suffer is indeed a brain injury,” he says. “The route of the injury is just a little bit different.” The Vanderbilt clinic is exploring various brain-training exercises to help people recover. “It would be nice if [these exercises] improved test scores,” Jackson says. “But a bigger issue is, does it make them more adept at returning to work? Or are they able to balance their checkbook? Are they driving without accidents?” He’s trying to answer those questions in his research. Still, getting help to everyone who could use it remains a challenge. Vanderbilt’s clinic, for example, doesn’t have the capacity to follow up with everyone who has been discharged from the medical center’s own ICUs — and there are very few specialized centers like this in the country. Vanderbilt is now working to help build a network of such clinics across the U.S. Langford says the support he has received at the post-ICU clinic helped him gradually recover some of his previous abilities and routines. The day before I visited him, he had been pleased to be able to venture out to vote in person in a local election. “I was able to get in the car, go to our little precinct, which is maybe half a mile, and was able to come back,” he says. “The forest got a little bit smaller.” His mother, Leta, knows there are still challenges ahead, but her faith keeps her strong. “You’re here today, I’m here today,” she tells her son. “So let’s enjoy today. And tomorrow — it will take care of itself.” Enlarge this image Richard Langford and his mother Leta Langford, play the piano together at their home in East Nashville. Richard almost died a decade ago and still suffers some cognitive symptoms, but he says music keeps him going. Morgan Hornsby for NPR hide caption toggle caption Morgan Hornsby for NPR Richard Langford and his mother Leta Langford, play the piano together at their home in East Nashville. Richard almost died a decade ago and still suffers some cognitive symptoms, but he says music keeps him going. Morgan Hornsby for NPR You can contact Richard Harris at [email protected] .

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5 changing Reasons Why power Should body a sampling of

Title: 5 changing Reasons Why power Should body a sampling of YOUR extension Strategy

Word Count: 479

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Keywords: inspiration,success strategy

Article Body: Copyright 2006 Cari Vollmer

Lets front evident. spirit answerability embody operose. positive befitting amenability perform. vigor pressures mount, homey demands turn out overwhelming, health suffers, pressure builds.

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For one is love and both are one in love is now live!  

Authors will be revealed next week!  For now all fics are anonymous. Treats can be posted through author reveals on 2/21.  We will post an updated masterpost at that time.

For one is love and both are one in love collection on AO3 |  Gift Fic Master Post Part One | Treats Masterpost

Gift Fic Master Post Part Two: 

In Other Words, Hold My Hand for MBlair

Stargazing and waltzing on the lake.

Meet Me in the Meadow for MeadowHayle

Ben was not the typical Alpha. Rey was not the typical Omega. Utterly indifferent to other people, only in their fantasies or dreams would they experience desire. After many years of loneliness, they meet in a support group for struggling demi-humans, and everything changes. Ben and Rey embark together on a healing journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Maybe, they don’t need to be alone, anymore. Maybe, they were never alone, to begin with.

The Rise of Ren for Merixcil

For the last seat in the Knights of Ren, there are two candidates. The first, a powerful scion of a great Force legacy, formally trained by the last Jedi. The second, a force sensitive urchin with no past, nurtured by the cut-throat criminal underworld. Kylo or Kira. There can only be one.

Legion for midwinterspring

The war was over. Across the galaxy, hundreds called out in one voice: “I need a teacher.” A fic for midwinterspring for the RFFA Valentine’s Day 2020 Exchange Prompt: Rey and Ben train new Force users and fix things

All That Glitters for MintyCel

The Kingdom of Exegol holds the key to Kylo's future. All he needs to do is to get past the omega guarding it.

Thaw My Frozen Heart for Miranda13

“A bounty hunter decides that the former Supreme Leader would make an excellent prize and manages to get the jump on Ben while he is on a mission for the Resistance, encasing him in carbonite. Rey is quick to mount a solo rescue mission and helps Ben recover from the hibernation sickness when she eventually gets him back." - Reylo-Prompts

Good Boy for MissCoppelia

Ben adopts a dog who needs some training. Thankfully, he gets help (and a little bit more) from Rey, a dog trainer.

the world's not perfect but for misszeldasayre

What would happen in a galaxy where the New Republic never got off the ground and the First Order choked before it started? Maybe a scavenger girl would become a foundling under the care of a Mandalorian bounty hunter.  Maybe a troubled child would shake off a burdensome legacy to follow his father's less-than-lawful profession. Maybe a cocky flyboy would find himself using his charm to win gigs delivering spice for the syndicates. Maybe a mechanically-minded girl would start taking off-the-books jobs for the occasional criminal. Maybe a boy with too many questions would leave his parents to learn about this thing called the Force. Turns out the galaxy is a lawless place with every sentient for themselves.

like roses and clover for mrstater

" There is no comfortable position. No matter how he laid down on his cot, his bones feel brittle, his skin itching all over with the sensation of a thousand ants crawling all over his body. His stomach swirls like a maelstrom, and he blames it on the caf he had in order to stay awake through one of his lessons. Pathetic. You can’t even sleep right. He promises to skip the caf the next day, and his consciousness floats on the surface even as he wishes to be pulled under." -- Ben Solo has never had a single good night's sleep in his life. Rey of Jakku never wanted one. The Battle of Exegol rang and wants to know if this is still the case.

It never gets easier, you just get better.  for MyJediLife

Ben is an addict working through his pain. Rey is a counselor assigned to his care. They weren't supposed to fall in love.

Dreamscape  for Nebulous Bounds (RainonyourBack)

Kylo mostly worsens and occasionally betters Rey's visions while she sleeps.

Why we can't be for newseptembers

When old Maz forsaw a dyad, Rey never thought it would be a soulmate bond between her and the First Order coven member Kylo Ren. Desperately trying to undo her connection to the enemy, she seeks out ancient texts and meets Ben, a bookshop owner and crafter, who seems to catch her attention every time they meet.

Beside the Lake for Ngoc12thefangirl

“Ben…” It’s half groan, half laugh, all ache — and he wants to reach out to her but he doesn’t trust himself to stop at only holding her hand. Rey’s gaze softens, and that grief she’s been feeling comes roiling out of her like a thunderstorm. It’s too much for him to take. “Tell me.” “I want kids.” She says the words so softly that he might not have known what she was saying if he hadn’t seen her lips moving and heard the syllables echoing in his mind. “Oh.” It’s stupid, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “I mean…” She fumbles again, but this time she doesn’t even bother finishing in words. I want kids now. A short, smutty one-shot in which Ben and Rey grapple with the next step in their life together.

You Need A Teacher for ninecrimes

After the events of TROS, Rey returns to Ahch-To... and a healed Ben Solo. There, she plans to consummate their relationship. Too bad she has no idea what she's doing.... Luckily, Ben is happy to teach her everything he knows. ----- “Okay.” Rey took a deep breath, preparing herself for the strange, mortifying experience to come. “So what do I do?” “Well,” he said, “first you let me kiss you some more. Then, when you’re ready, you take your clothes off. Then you sit on my face.” “Just like that?” “Just like that.”

Grey Skies Ahead for NiriKeehan

She took his hand—not in the name of the Light, or the Dark. They were a dyad, the embodiment of balance—an Alliance of Grey.

Ever as before and ever just as sure as the sun will rise for OccasionallyCreative

The war is over. On a peaceful estate in Naboo's Lake Country, Rey and Ben prepare for their wedding and think of how they got here. Using lyrics of title song of 'Beauty and the Beast'.

swish of the bumblebee for OptimisticBeth

She should get the sand - and gravel, and rocks - and run all the way home and make things right for him. Although, the fish had gotten her into this mess in the first place, however inadvertently, so maybe she should move him to Finn’s room where she wouldn’t have to look at his little fins swishing away ever again, reminding her of- Rey's betta fish needs an upgrade in living conditions. When she posts a question asking for help, she gets a little more than she bargained for.

Dissolver of Sugar for optimus_pam

“Rey...what could anyone do, to make up for what Kylo Ren did?” Or: Redemption isn't supposed to be easy. A TROS fix-it fic, of sorts.

Delirium for PalenDrome (nerdherderette)

That was the trouble with these things, wasn't it? Every once in a while the drugs backfired and they both got a dose of what was really, probably, very potent pheromones. Excerpt: He heard the edge of anger in her voice, the snarl she tried so desperately to conceal. The powder was getting to her. "You're jealous, aren't you?" "No!" "You are." Against his better judgement, he stalked to her, backing her to the wall. "You can't stand the fact that you're not my first partner." "I'm not your partner!" He leaned in, lips almost to her ear. "You want to be though, don't you?" She barreled into him with a scream, head connecting with his chest as she tackled him to the floor. Faster than he could react, she had his arms pinned over his head, knees firmly pressing into his breastbone. "I don't want to be anything to you. Not your friend, not your ally, and especially not your lover."

Renewed for patig_00

The world between worlds is neither hot nor cold. So when Ben feels his arms break into gooseflesh, when his shoulder aches with not a remembrance but an actual twinge of pain, when he tries to rouse himself from meditation and realizes that he’s fighting the need to fall back asleep, he opens his eyes—in a room on the Millennium Falcon. [[Something in the Force allows Ben Solo to be resurrected on the Millenium Falcon during a little Resistance mission. Expected hilarity ensues. Angst WITH A HAPPY ENDING.]]

 a million miles (cross the ocean)  for persimonne

in which the Force tries to pay back some of the debt it owes the Skywalkers.

All that's best of dark and bright for persopilliankore

Rey had big plans for Valentine's Day: laundry, errands, and an evening of fantasizing over her impossibly sexy building manager, Ben Solo. That was before she found an anonymous love poem in her mailbox.

Wherever There is You, I Will be There Too for politicalmamaduck

According to Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked. Rey journeys there in search of a lost soul.

Laid To Rest for PoliticalPadmé (magnetgirl)

Ben wants to show Rey the galaxy, to see it with her. First, they have business on Naboo.

What Was Lost Is Now Found for punkeraa

"Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." The Parable of the Prodigal Son, New International Version

Be With Me for qotsisajakk

TROS Fix-it. When Rey asks the Jedi of the past to be with her, the bond she shares with Kylo Ren also opens. He is forced to come to terms with his growing feelings for her, and together, they take down the greatest evil, those words continue to bring them together.

Always in Motion for QueenOfCarrotFlowers

Dr. Rey Jackson, archaeologist, is mistaken for a celebrity and given an upgrade to Business Class on her incredibly long flight. Unfortunately, she's been seated next to the douchebag who's been pestering her for the last two hours. More unfortunately, she finds a letter in her carry-on bag telling her that their plane is about to go down. The worst part? The letter was written by Luke Skywalker, a man who has been dead for years.

we might be the outsiders for radioactivesaltghoul

As though, in a blink, the cavern becomes light, and he sees the pale cream and gold shimmer of the creature, with a dark brown pattern across the head and hood.

Between the Sun and the Moon for redbelles

The Force demands that Rey and Ben pay a price for the power they gained in their preparation to take down Palpatine, but they don’t learn what they paid until it disturbs the peaceful life they’re trying to build together after the war is over.

Starless Sky, Black for RedPaladin465

“Why did you change your mind?” It takes a long time for her to answer. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

The Girl From The Tower for ReyloBrit

Prompt: "Quiet and obedient Rey lives a godly life with her grandfather, until the family hire a new gardener Ben, a mysterious and deeply attractive man. Sparks fly between the two."

The Falcon and the Wolf for reylotrash711

On the fifth anniversary of the destruction of Starkiller Base the Senate is throwing a masked ball and invited members of the old Resistance. Still trying to rehabilitate his image, Senator Ben Solo has no choice but to attend. Written to fulfill this prompt: Ben and Rey dance at a masked ball, unaware of who they are dancing with. Until the masks are taken off at midnight. Romance and Sexual Tension ensue, will they be able to refrain their urges? Hell no. But I also mixed in a healthy dose of this prompt as well: Prompt 2 - What if Ben was unable to bring Rey back and had to call on the help of the Skywalkers that came before him? Is he ready to pay the price of losing his force sensitivity for the women he loves?

and we'll live a long life for ReyloTrashCompactor (NextToSomething)

When Rey heals him on Kef Bir, Ben has a vision. He and Rey must work together to prevent it from coming true.

Found Belonging for rissanox

Rey joins her friends and former comrades in arms on Chandrila for the festivities around the anniversary of the battle of Exegol. To everyone’s surprise she is accompanied by two mysterious Mandalorians.

Loathe Thy Neighbor for SaintHeretical

Rey's neighbor is the worst. He listens to terrible music, he's impolitely large, and he smells incredible. She hates almost everything about him. Especially the smelling good bit.

Can You Feel The Love Tonight? for shiiera

Ben Solo travels to Takodana National Park in South Africa on a research mission where he meets fellow researcher, Rey. While they might get along as well as lions and hyenas at first, perhaps they have more in common with each other than they think.

He's Just Not That Into You(r) Scent for shipperofdarkness

Rey is a young and single Omega who hasn't had a lot of luck so far finding a nice Beta guy who isn't a total flake. They say they've had a great time with her, but seem to have a difficult time with calling her back. Ben is an Alpha bartender who is tired of hearing about her dating difficulties, and is ready to drop some truth bombs. An ABO He's Just Not That Into You AU

The Purest Love for six4au

When a deeply scarred and traumatized Ben Solo is placed in a program to try and pair him with a canine helper, he finds that he gets more than he ever imagined with the therapist assigned to him.

The Monster in Skywalker Manner for solikerez

Rey marches up the walk, takes hold of the door knocker, and bangs it sharply three times. Nothing. She rattles the door handle. Nothing. Absurdly, she checks the address (is this the right creepy-and-probably-abandoned-Skywalker-Manner on Alderaan street?). It is. -Or- Rey takes a shady job to clean the old Skywalker Manner and discovers that there's something much scarier than dust and spiderwebs living there. But maybe that's not the whole story, because what kind of monster loves roses and books?

Stargazing for SpaceWaffleHouseTM

“I wish they would go blind, stop whispering: he’s lying, he’ll leave. I hate that they know what I don’t want to hear. Their poison passes my lips, harmless. Call me Faith, not Medusa, no one need become stone.”

through the darkness to the dawn  for starfleetjedi

She couldn’t breathe. Spots danced in her vision, black as the nothingness yawning behind her breastbone. Ben was gone. No. The plea tore out of her, wild and broken, racing through the vastness of the Force, past stars and planets and distant moons to the far edges of the universe. There was only silence. She tried again. Ben. Ben, please. Answer me. Or: Rey, after.

Tabula Rasa for suchlostcreatures (godfmischief)

Ben survives the battle on Exegol. That was the easy part.

Intro to Love for TheStolenQuill

Rey and Ben are music students, put together to work on a final that, surprise isn't in a music class. They hadn't really known each other much before that but will that change as they keep working together?

I met you once — ( In a dream ) for thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)

He sucks in a deep breath and exhales, a pout forming on his plump lips and it's so distracting the way they- "Just Ben," He closes his eyes. "see me no more than that, 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚." Or Where Ben and Rey are soulmates and Ben is more than meets the eye

Supernova for Tiara_of_Sapphires

“She loved him so much she was going to smother him with it until there wasn’t a molecule of doubt left in his heart.” After the war Rey and Ben settle into an uneasy life of peace, followed by judgment and resentment. Ben Solo may have decided to remain behind to atone for his sins, but the people won’t forget Kylo Ren so soon.

Happy Accident for tmf

A baby. Her baby having a baby. She’d given up dreams of grandchildren when Ben was fourteen, and not even his having a steady girlfriend had let her change her mind about it. “So yeah, we need to talk,” Rey mumbles at last. Ben doesn’t say a word, and Leia can imagine him clearly, sitting there, staring off into space, dazed—like when she’d told Han that she was pregnant.  One fun night at the Yub Nub Club and a little bit of carelessness with the condom... Not that she’d ever tell Ben that he’d been an accident.  He’d guessed it for years, but she’d go to her grave asserting he hadn’t been. “You want to keep it,” Ben says at last—a statement, not a question. — Or: Leia watches her son and his girlfriend prepare to become parents.

Crafting A Connection for tmwillson3

Rey and Ben have been friends forever, so much so that Ben never dreamed that it something as small as getting that manager's position he'd been gunning for would get in the way of it. Now that it has, Rey's been distant. So... so distant and he has no idea how to get her back. Rey has only been trying to be a good friend and not use him for his status, which means instead of accepting rides from him like she had, she hasn't. She isn't trying to push him away but things are different, and he's difficult now. What on earth can she do about it? Mother nature has something to say about these two, that's for sure. The snow storm of the year is coming, stranding the two together the Friday before Valentine's Day weekend to give them the time to work things out.

this tangled light for TolkienGirl

The war is over, but at what cost?

Welcome to the Fire for trasharama

Rey is competing on the reality television show, First Order Inferno, for a chance to become Head Chef at Benjamin Solo's latest restaurant. What happens when the competition gets a little too hot in the kitchen?

as certain dark things are to be loved for tropixo (ursaminors)

Lady Rey, Master of the Knights of Ren, makes a choice. She chooses Ben Solo.

Bend or Break for tweis24

It's been six months since the Battle of Crait. Both sides of the war have been continuing down their path, both sides struggling with loss. For some, it's just business. But for others, it's personal. For Rey of Jakku and Kylo Ren... it most certainly is personal. Once again, the Supreme Leader of the First Order and the Jedi, Hope of the Resistance confront each other and clash. How will they react and what will transpire when Bonds are blocked and unexpected events are thrown their way? Will either of them bend? Or will they break?

Heaven, let me through for Twisted_Mirror

No matter how hard they try, they can't get each other out of their heads.

Osmosis for viajeramyra

“I don’t need Ben Solo,” Rey states, rising from the throne. Her steps are slow and deliberate as she stalks towards him. “I need Kylo Ren.” Distantly, she notes the irony. And then she offers him her hand. ------ In which Ben doesn't reach Rey in time. (And the one time he does.)

Tell the World I'm Alive for VirtualMadness

Rey returns to Exegol to retrieve all she has left of Ben Solo: his shirt. But what she finds there isn't at all what she expected to find. (Title comes from the song Who Will Save You Now by Les Friction. The lyrics are just so Reylo and it's a beautiful song.)

Sunset for Vivien

Rey has news. Ben has a question.

 Good Morning, Mrs. Solo  for walkingsaladshooter

Just a sweet one-shot about a really good morning for Ben and Rey. Modern AU.

After the End for witchsoup

Ambassador Organo-Solo is asked to attend a celebration to mark the anniversary of the end of the war, and is reunited with the woman whose life he saved. The woman he once loved.

getting the best of your opponent is easier if you smooch them first for wombathos

A few months after the Battle of Crait, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren orders a ceasefire and asks to meet a delegation from the Resistance to negotiate the end of the war and the future of the Galaxy far, far away. But our heroes Finn and Rose notice straight away that their friend Rey is behaving strangely…

Borne Aloft for Xochiquetzl

A mysterious voice has called Rey to Tatooine after the death of Ben Solo and the defeat of the First/Final Order. Once she's there, a ghostly guide offers to take Rey through the Underworld to save Ben and return him to the world of the living.