Chapter 4 - Hex

Rey woke with a small start and was immediately confused as to where she was however it only took seconds for her to remember the absolutely insane events of the previous day. She hoped futilely that it had all been a dream but the heavy smell of smoke and scratch of the blankets told her she would not be so lucky. She dragged her hands over her face and slung her feet off the bed. There was a crumpled pile of blankets on the ground which told her Ben had returned in the night and slept on the floor.

The sun came in through the window which now had drawn open curtains and Rey followed the light. She padded across the cold floor and looked out the window to see Ben huddled over an open fire. She knocked lightly on the glass and his head spun around quickly, they made eye contact and he gave her a slight smile before gesturing for her to join him.

Rey backed away from the window, slipped her shoes on and pulled her sweater over her head. She looked around for a mirror and found none so she pulled her hair into a tight knot on the top of her head. She hoped her breath wasn't too rancid from the preserved meat which had been considered her dinner the night before and eventually pushed the door open, wondered to the side of the house and found Ben.

"Good morning." He muttered, half turning towards her.

"Morning." She yawned, noticing various pots and kettles hanging over the fire. She picked up her pace when she caught the sight of eggs frying in one of the heavy pans. She plopped down beside the large man on a bench which seemed to be hacked out of a whole log.

"Eggs?" She asked excitedly, smiling when Ben looked up at her curiously before nodding. Rey gave a delighted little wiggle and peered into the other pot on the fire. It looked like a pot full of bubbling mud.

"It's chicory." Came Ben's gravelly voice in explanation. "Not as good as coffee and certainly not as good as tea but it does the job." He sighed, reaching over and pouring some of the liquid into an earthenware mug.

"I never was the biggest fan of tea to begin with." She said, raising the cup to her nose. It didn't smell exactly like coffee but it was close. "My American friends all think that's funny… You know, how brits are supposed to be obsessed with tea."

"We do rather love it." He muttered, a smile barely cracking across his face. "It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a proper cup of tea" he sighed amusedly.

"Were you born in England?" Rey asked as she took a sip of the chicory, she winced initially at the bitterness of it but the second sip was more palatable.

Ben nodded, pouring himself a bit of the thick liquid. "Derbyshire, near Bakewell. And you?" Rey smiled, she figured from his accent he was from somewhere up north.

"London, but not the nice part." She muttered, rolling her eyes. She was perfectly used to explaining to people that not all of London was sparkling royal palaces and magnificent churches. Ben huffed,

"I didn't realize any of london was nice."

"What do you mean?" She asked, taken aback as she imagined the sprawling parks and luxurious mansions of central london. Ben set his mug down and leaned forward to pull the fried eggs off the fire.

"On the occasions I visited london I was struck by the number of workhouses and the amount of poverty. Even the wealthiest of the city were grotesque to me in their opulence and corruption."

Rey was taken aback by the bitterness of his voice.

"My father was a fur merchant, when he returned from the colonies to sell his wares I would accompany him to some of the finest homes in London." He started, passing Rey a metal plate with two eggs. "My mother was of a noble lineage but never participated in society outside of Derbyshire, and it was easy to tell why." He sighed.

Rey dug into her eggs, eyes still glued on Ben as he continued his story.

"Those people were vipers." He muttered through a mouthful of his own eggs. "Always speaking down to us, as if I did not have my own title just because my father was a merchant. Snoke was the worst of them, even back then."

"You knew Snoke when you were young?" Rey asked in surprise.

"My father knew him before I was even conceived." He sighed, "My parents thought he would make a fine mentor for me, and they were right in a way. When we came to the colonies it was under Snoke's instruction and with the promise I would one day take his position as Commander of the Royal Regiment."

Rey nodded, "Sounds like a better reason for coming to Amercia than mine." She laughed. "At least you had a job lined up." Ben looked at her like he was confused about why she was laughing so she explained. "I didn't really have anything planned for when I got here, I came into a large sum of money unexpectedly so I bought a ticket and just left."

"You left your family?" Ben asked, placing his plate beside him, the confused tilt of his eyebrows making her smile.

"Never really had a family to begin with." She sighed, shaking her head.

"Oh…" He muttered the same way people usually did when she explained that she was an orphan, voice full of pity.

"It's okay, never knew my parents and grew up pretty much on my own." She explained with a shrug.

"Where did you get the funds?" He asked as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"The man who I lived with just up and died one day, Plutt was awful but at least he didn't have any family to leave his estate to so I sold everything." Rey muttered with a mouth full of eggs, she smirked to herself, remembering how good it had felt to get rid of Plutt's belongings and start a new life with sizeable amount in her bank account. When Rey glanced back at Ben he was looking at her with an odd expression, she would have called it a smile but the warriness of his eyes betrayed him.

"What?" She asked, putting her plate down and leaning in towards him. Ben shook his head slightly and looked at the ground as he spoke.

"What made Plutt so awful? Why did you want to get away so badly?"

Rey almost never spoke about Plutt to anyone, the only person who knew the extent of her experience with him was Finn. She pulled her sweater more tightly around her shoulders and looked off into the trees. She figured she had trusted Ben up until this point with her safety, and she felt that she could trust him with this personal bit about herself. Besides, who was he going to tell?

"He was my legal guardian and even though he provided enough for me to get by, like food and clothes, he wasn't nice and was always drunk. He'd hit me when he didn't get his way." She glanced up at Ben and noticed he was grimacing. She hoped he wouldn't pity her too much after she told him her sob story. He stood up and stoked the fire, listening as she continued. "The physical stuff was bad but the things he'd say were way worse, you know?"

"Yes…" He sighed, his tone serious. He joined her back on the bench and stared off towards the woods, she got the feeling he knew how it felt to be verbally beaten down. "Snoke was the same." He offered, surprising Rey. "Still is." He muttered with a humorless scoff.

"I thought your charm protected you." Rey murmured, gesturing to his chest where she knew the cross was hidden.

"I can still hear him occasionally, when I'm feeling particularly weak I think. His voice gets through and it's always the same as when I was a boy."

Rey felt her own face contort with pity now and her heart ached for Ben. At least she had only had to deal with Plutt for sixteen years, whild Ben had been stuck with his abuser for centuries.

"The charm makes it so he can't affect me physically…" His voice was a whisper now and Rey knew it wasn't just verbal abuse Snoke had inflicted on Ben as a child. "That's why you have to stay close, I don't know if the charm will protect you if we are separated." His voice had a tone of desperation to it.

Rey nodded, she had so many questions about Snoke and Ben's upbringing but she didn't know where to start so she changed the subject.

"So how does this work? Is it a curse? You said your mother told you it was a curse."

"A curse, a hex, a malediction, call it what you will." Ben explained, resting his chin on his hand, he looked more tired than before as if the memory of Snoke's misconduct had drained him. "A by product of Snoke's devil worship is what it is, he poisoned this land with his evil doing and it is I, and now you, who are to suffer the consequences."

Rey chewed on her lip and curled in on herself minutely, his words and the bitterness of his voice struck fear into her.

"I have to get out of here… I have people waiting for me, they'll come looking for me if I don't turn up." She whispered and Ben scowled.

"They might come looking for you but they won't find you.."

"They will! they'll find my car on the road!" Rey argued but Ben just shook his head.

"My uncle knew this was where I chased Snoke to, he came looking for me and all I could hear was him calling my name. We could never find each other no matter how close his voice seemed to be."

Rey slammed her hands down beside her, she was becoming frustrated at Ben's hopelessness.

"Well then how did I find you?" she whined.

"I don't know, I did not think it to be possible." He said, his voice low.

"If I could find you, there has to be a way for Finn to find us." she muttered determinedly. "I'm getting out of here, one way or another." She glanced at Ben and noticed his melancholic frown had been replaced with a small smirk.

"We can try." he conceeded as he stood and Rey heard the smallest bit of optimism tint his voice, sweetening it like sugar in dark and bitter coffee.

Rey helped Ben around the cabin the rest of the morning, she followed him about as he gathered kindling, washed his shirts and foraged some mushrooms from the woods. She learned that Ben made his own soap from the ashes in the hearth and the fat of the animals he ate. She found a handful of edible mushrooms and two handfuls of mushrooms Ben said would kill her. When she added her harvest of fungi to Ben's basket he smiled warmly at her.

"I had an idea…" He said as he plucked one of the mushrooms Rey picked out of the bunch and tossed it to the ground. "Poisonous," He sighed before continuing. Rey was surprised, he had been silent save for explaining the process of making lye for soap. She wondered if he was annoyed with her for being so pushy and accusatory earlier or if he was just deep in thought.

"Oh?" She asked, looking up at him she noticed he was already looking at her. His eyes were dark and sparkling.

"I'm going to take one of the stones out of my cross for you to have." He stated, his voice taut. Nerves gripped Rey immediately.

"You can't do that! What if the charm only works with all the stones?"

"I don't know how it works but it should offer you some protection, incase we're separated."

"No, Ben, I don't want you to ruin it, you said it's a family heirloom." Rey said, shaking her head as Ben pulled aside the collar of his shirt, exposing the pale flesh of his neck against which the silver chain glinted. She didn't have any family heirlooms of her own but she imagined it carried great personal importance for Ben. She watched as his hand slipped under his shirt and he fished out the cross. In the Daylight the pendant was more ornate than she remembered from the previous night and so beautiful.

"I don't have any heirs to pass it down to, so why does it matter?" He asked nonchalantly with a shrug. Rey scoffed and looked up at him dumbfounded.

"You could."

"Doubtful." He responded curtly and flipped the cross around between his long fingers She saw that the back was just as ornately carved and imbued with one larger stone in the middle.

"You don't even know it will work! What if the protection is in the cross, not the stones?" She protested.

"The stones and the cross were both blessed by the same man." He murmured contemplatively, running the pad of his thumb over the large stone. Quickly he pulled the necklace over his head and handed it to Rey. She took it gently, cradling the object with reverence. She didn't think she had ever held something so old and valuable before. She thought for a brief moment that the silver still felt warm from it's contact with Ben's skin. When she looked up at him again she gasped to see a small knife in his hand. Protectively she closed her fingers around the charm.

"You really don't have to…" She began to protest but Ben cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"I want to." He stated, his voice impatient, gesturing for her to give him the cross. She placed it in his open palm reluctantly and watched as he brought the knife up to the stone. Before she could do any more protesting he deftly sunk the tip of the blade into the crease between stone and metal and with a small pop, the rock was freed from it's bindings. He glanced up at her as he turned it over in his hand, "For you…" He said softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

Rey watched him in silence as he reached for her hand and pressed the stone against her palm, his other hand coming up to curl her fingers around it. His hands dwarfed hers as he wrapped his fingers around them and she looked up at him, noting how his mouth had tilted into a small sad smile.

"Thank you." She breathed. He only nodded in response and slowly pulled his hands away from her own. She felt colder somehow without the contact and gave an involuntary shiver.

"Let us get inside, the sun will be going down soon." he said, turning and picking up his basket of mushrooms again. As he walked off towards the cabin Rey watched him replace the chain around his neck and then looked down at the stone in her hands.

It was about the size of a quarter and polished into a smooth shining surface. The color was beautiful, blue and grey marbled with white and green. She stood transfixed as she gazed at it, mesmerized by smoothness between her fingers.

"Rey." Came a voice from Ben's direction but she looked up to see he had already disappeared into the forest. Her stomach dropped as the familiar sensation of being watched overcame her. She felt a chilly draught like breath on the back of her neck and she gripped the stone more tightly, clutching it to her chest. The cold breeze felt as if it shifted and was no longer directed at her, and the feeling of being watched began to recede. She darted off towards where Ben had entered the trees and called out for him frantically to no avail.

Thankfully they hadn't strayed too far from the cabin and Rey found her way back quickly, only tripping on one gnarled root as she did. He looked up at her from where he was taking a log for the fire as she broke free from the shadow of the trees.

"I told you to stay close." He muttered, turning back to his task.

"I think the stone works." Rey sighed as she crossed the clearing and slumped down in front of the fire, the warmth melting away the last of the ghostly chill she had felt. He approached and added the new log to the flames with a satisfied smile on his lips.

Author's Note: Hey sorry for the slow updates on this! I hope you are still enjoying it, please let me know! (Also sorry for any historical inaccuracies, I try to research as best as I can!) Leave me a comment to let me know your thoughts please! Thanks for reading!