ミ☆ - 𝙶𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸'𝚖 𝚊 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚕 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚖𝚎
In which their loyalties lie with the first order, but they're both torn, undecided, broken. In each other, they find themselves.
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡...
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fade: chapter eighteen
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
TIME SEEMS TO PASS so incredibly slowly. It feels as if months go by, but it could be just weeks, she cannot quite tell. Florence has shut off her emotional availability to the point where she is nothing but a shell of who she used to be. It's been a minute since she trained, she can no longer afford those relationships, emotions. Sometimes she supervises groups of cadets in training, but rarely does she actually join in. She is avoiding everyone and everything.
Ben is desperate to reach her again, but she has closed herself off. The feelings are still there but they're both at a point where they hardly even speak to each other. She's trying to shut him out no matter how hard it is — every time she passes his door she thinks about knocking. Every time she walks away. He hears her sometimes, feels her presence and he hopes that she'll finally be ready again. He won't push her.
But he does find himself in her quarters today, another attempt to talk to her. Lately he's been doing this every day, just stopping by in an attempt to make small talk, and she's hardly responded.
"Do you want to continue your training?" Ben asks, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. Florence is sat by the small round table right in front of her window, seemingly just staring into the wall. It's a quite haunting sight.
She shakes her head. "No," she replies calmly, gently taking a sip from the glass she holds in her hand. At this point, she is honestly just doing the very most to piss him off. She doesn't want to become stronger, doesn't want to train with him because it gives her more reason to stay and lately she finds herself trying to sever herself from this life by distancing herself from everything and everyone she's gotten to know.
But Ben is different. It's easy shutting Hux and Kez out, but Ben feels like a part of her that she's not so sure she wants him gone. Not fully, at least.
Perhaps it is a bit ironic, but Ben hardly recognizes her anymore, just as she has felt about him so many times. It's frightening, the way he looks at her and can't seem to remember how she looks when she smiles. "Who are you?"
She looks at him, lips tweaked downwards in a confused frown. "I'm the woman you want me to be. Am I not?" She raises a defiant brow.
He shakes his head; he never wanted her to be anyone other than the woman he fell in love with. He never wanted her to become someone she isn't in an effort to please him.
