Work Text:
He paints her deftly, night by night. Broad strokes on a blank canvas: sketching, smearing, smudging until the image is there, solid and clear.
'Rey,' he titles the first piece.
She is pure light hidden in softly draped shadows.
Tangible, he thinks, but not real. Never real.
So, he settles for her presence in the only way he knows.
He draws her endlessly.
Sketching in every medium available until she’s so ingrained in his life that his fingers are stained black with her essence.
It’s not enough.
His studio fills with her, but it’s never enough.
She begins to haunt him.
As effortlessly as she slipped into his art, she slips into his dreams.
“Hello,” she whispers.
He is captivated in an instant, pulled into her physical orbit before he’s even aware that his body is moving.
His hands settle on her waist.
“Hi, Rey.”
“Are all of these me?” She asks in awe, fingers trailing over each portrait.
“A poor attempt, yes.”
Her lips twitch in the hint of a smile at his lie. “They’re beautiful.”
Emboldened he replies. “Only because you are.”
The sadness in her smile as she turns away undoes him.
As time passes, they build a sanctuary together.
He teaches her to dance in the soft light of the moon, determined to never see her sad again.
In return, she teaches him to be free. That he doesn’t have to carry his burdens so close to his chest.
He lets them go one by one.
“I wish you were real,” she sighs wistfully one night, and instantly Ben knows.
He loves her. This imaginary woman in the midst of his very real loneliness.
He loves her.
He’s across the room in an heartbeat, wiping away the solitary tear trailing down her cheek.
“I do too.”
Her eyebrows knit together as she eyes him curiously.
“What do you mean? I am real.”
He feels the dreamworld slipping as reality sinks in. People whispered of this. Of dreams and desires and finding your soulmate.
Soulmates.
He stares at her, stunned.
“Come find me,” she whispers. “I’ll wait.”