fiachairecht | tell me faerie stories: a rec post

'Tell me faerie stories' is basically what I said in my prompts for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology Valentine’s Day swap, and holy fucking hell did the three fics I received – and several other amazing ones in the collection – tell me beautiful, horrifying faerie stories. So, here: a masterpost/reclist of stories with a fey/eldritch take on the Force that have murdered the fuck out of me.

Part I: The fics I got:

a woman dripping rubies (6.3k words, rated M)

Wherever she goes, darkness follows. Always in the shape of him.
When Rey and a small crew of Resistance fighters scour an unnamed planet for a mysterious power source, she is separated and confronted by a great evil wearing a human face. Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, has found her, and has no intention to let her go.

I got a fairytale! I got three fairytales! Some dear person took three of my favourite songs and wrote me Reylo fairytales about them and wrapped an overarching plot around them! This is such a wonderful look at desire and strangeness and caution and I am so, so happy I indirectly caused this to exist in the world via my prompts.

clean hands, light heart (5.5k words, rated T)

Rey knows how cruel you need to be, to get things clean.
She doesn't want to be cruel, though.

I fell off my bed. Several times. This is the dark-not-dark Rey of my dreams, who’s fallen into the light and fallen in love with control, with life, so invested in being Ben’s exact opposite that she is also him, to the point of calling Leia mama. Scavenger Rey as hungry as her light helping lead the resistance with an army of mind-tricked stormtroopers, loving Ben through possession and pain because no matter what the Force does there will always be them. Gods I love this.

in this white wave (10.6k words, rated T)

In which King Kylo of the Winter Court and Rey of the Summer Court struggle with the past, themselves, and their ferbidden Seelie/Unseelie luuuuuurve
This is actually a story of attraction, the ways we hurt the ones we love and ourselves as we come to terms with who we are and what made us that way, and the complexity of balance.
With fairies!

Faerie court politics! Glorious imagery that I want to roll around in forever and ever! Bonus beautifully happy seelie queens Amilyn and Leia who make cry! This is a lush delightful sharp look at all the hard bits of wanting and I’m dead and in love.

Part II: Fics other people got:

every inch between us becomes light years (1.6k words, rated M)

She is Rey of nothing, of nobody, of nowhere, and she is so in tune with the Force that there is no room in her for anything else.

This is one of the most beautiful sex-scene-as-character-study pieces that I’ve ever read. Rey has eaten the Light and the Light has eaten her, Ben has tried to remove himself from the Force but cannot stay away from her, and the whole thing is unbearably gorgeous and lyrical and I’m a wreck.

they call her the nothing (2.6k words, rated T)

She remembers the old name. The thing she had gone by once, before she became something greater. She has no use for Rey, and yet she tucks it into the hollow place inside her anyway, to rattle around with her hunger and her power.
There’s a strength, she thinks, in keeping something thought stolen from you. Even if you don’t want it anymore.

Another on the theme of immanent force-entity Rey, a beautiful curious dark scavenger of a black hole who eats the Force, eats planets, hides little bits of her collection deep inside her almost absentmindedly, and finally holds out her hand to Ben of Jakku and asks if he, too would like to be consumed. Absolutely stunning.

a promise of grace (under silver-grey skies) (47.3k words, rated T)

After the war, he's shipped off to Ahch-To to live out his days in exile among the seabirds and the ghosts. Every six months, someone will visit and make sure he's still alive.
At least, that's the plan.
(Or: the war for Ben Solo's heart, featuring an immanent cosmic entity, an island where time is wonky, and a stubborn twentysomething from Jakku.)

A lot of these fics have left me breathless and on the floor but this ... is filled with so much beauty and pain and love and crafted with such an unbelievable amount of care that it’s just ... literally indescribable. Read it.

this monstrous force(1.4k words, rated G)

She never knew what she looked like in the Force. She knew what she felt like, and she knew what others appeared to her. Some nights she would dream of waking in a shifting world of limitless power and her teeth were replaced with fangs, her eyes with refined sight and the hunger of a beast that hasn't fed in far too long.

Eldritch!Force in a monstrous incarnation, with such darkly sharp imagery and a wonderfully tense push-pull between Rey and Ben (and Luke!) and the Force.

memento mori (memento vivere) (6.7k words, rated M)

“Even gods find it hard to love and be wise at the same time.”
“Save me and I will save you.”
***
Kylo has dreamt of her for years, and cannot imagine why Fate has brought her to him now.

I did not know ‘steampunk fairytale’ was a genre missing from my life until I read this! There are old gods and strange machines and a tired underworld in the desert and a wonderfully stubborn Rey who cannot help but make life grow and I love it a lot.