Bartering

Warning: This drabble includes non-graphic descriptions of forced sex work. Although no rape is depicted directly, it is implied.

The slave boy can't be more than twenty. He has the look of a young man who hasn't yet grown into his body—tall and broad-shouldered but gangly, with a nose too large for his narrow face and prominent ears he's trying to hide under a mop of dark hair.

Rey sips her water and attempts to ignore him. It's difficult, though, because he keeps staring at her.

This bolthole of a cantina on Tatooine makes Niima Outpost look like a cultured oasis, and she wonders how this boy ended up here. He's currently being dandled in the lap of a silver-haired man with wandering hands, while nursing a cup of something he's barely old enough to be drinking.

Rey makes herself look away, but she can still feel his gaze on her. Maybe he's just scouting out his next patron; if so, he's wasting his time.

The boy disappears into a back room with the silver-haired man, and Rey can't help but wonder how much choice he has in the matter.

It isn't my place to intervene, she tells herself. Rey has been upbraided by the council on more than one occasion for sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. She's only on Tatooine for the night, and after she meets her contact, she's supposed to report directly to Master Luke with whatever new information she gathers.

The boy returns just as Rey finishes her meal. It doesn't surprise her when he claims the seat to her left. "I'm Ben," he says. "Who are you?"

A fresh love bite colors his throat, red and angry, and he smells like sex. Ben's master has dressed him in little enough—tight fitting tan pants with no shirt at all—and now that he's closer she can see the marks on his body. Bruises on his wrists, like faded blue shackles, and scratch marks that mar the plane of his pale chest.

Instead of answering, Rey asks, "How old are you?"

"Old enough," he says, smiling. But there's something empty in his grin, a counterfeit cheer that makes her stomach turn uncomfortably.

"Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not looking for… companionship," Rey says gently.

"Really?" he asks, an unbearable knowledge in his dark eyes. "Because you seem lonely."

"Oh? And you could tell this from looking at me?" Rey asks, bristling. She fidgets with her cup, just to have something to do with her hands.

Ben leans closer, until she can smell the liquor on his breath when he speaks. "It's my business to know loneliness on sight."

Rey feels herself blush. "I've taken vows," she says plainly.

He shrugs, smirking. "Husbands and wives take vows, too. Doesn't stop them from visiting me."

Ben touches her wrist, his thumb tracing a slow circle over her pulse point.

He has beautiful hands.

Before she can pull away, Rey feels a sharp pain behind her eyes, and suddenly she's seeing flashes of her own life, old memories overlaying the present. She's sitting here, in this dirty Tatooine cantina—but she's also five years old, crying herself to sleep, alone and hungry and afraid; now she's seven, marking off another day on the wall of the toppled AT-AT that serves as her home, wishing someone would come back for her; and then Master Luke arrives on Jakku and tells her that she, a scrawny scavenger child, is strong in the ways of the Force, and that she'll be coming with him.

Rey rips her hand away from the boy. She's shaking, and a throbbing pain, like a dull headache, lingers at her temples.

"I'm sorry," Ben says, and she can hear the panic in his breaking voice. "I didn't mean to do that. Sometimes, when I'm curious about someone, it just—it just happens—"

She's unnerved and a little startled, because never, in her nineteen years among the Jedi, has Rey known anyone to use the Force this way.

"What else can you do?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says quickly, but it's an obvious lie. Everything Ben feels shows so plainly on his expressive face.

"It's all right," Rey says. "You shouldn't be ashamed of it, or frightened by it."

"I'm not scared," Ben says forcefully, but that's a lie too. He's scared all the time, she'd wager.

He's too old for the council to consider taking him in and training him as a Jedi. They'd been hesitant to accept her, and she was only ten when Luke found her on Jakku. But she can't leave him—this clever, charming young man who's been marked for great things—to rot here on a backwater planet, enslaved and used.

And Rey knows, suddenly and surely, that no matter the consequences she'll face for it, this boy is going to become her student.

Notes: I'm trash for Jedi-teacher!Rey and apprentice!Ben, so although this little drabble is a standalone for now, I reserve the right to return to this universe if inspiration strikes. Many thanks to Next To Something for editing this tiny fic ages ago. You're the best beta I could dream up!