I want to be free. ( The statement tears itself out of his throat without warning, catching on his canines and gnashing his tone, a violent, desperate bark that sees itself leveled at the only other person available - worthy, brave, strong - enough to weather it. It's an admission that crackles with all the cold electricity of lightning in a bottle, a harsh realization for himself, if for no one else, and Kylo feels that if he weren't so thoroughly exhausted, wrung out, bone dry, the subsequent explosion of his rage and frustration would be enough to level the area. Rey's careful edging around it, and Kylo's own recollection of the last time he delivered such an embittered charge, could only ever call to mind that startled face, bathed in red, falling down and down and filling him up and up only to be left with -
Nothing. Nothing at all. The culmination of everything that she is charging him with reduced to ashes, cinder. A battle fought and waged and won but lost. Dark, dark blood on his hands, darker than he could hope to wash away, and then bright pain dragging him under. It had been too much then, and it is too much now, a confusing jumble of thought and intention that leaves him feeling scraped raw. The loss, greater than leverage, hangs open and gaping between them, the both of them gathered on separate ledges of the horrible chasm that has opened between them, a pit of loss and bitter hurt for reasons that are different and the same. That is them in a nutshell, he and Rey: different but the same, the warped and cracked mirror, the opposing sides of the same coin. What she sees of herself in him, she hates, and what he sees of himself in her, he cannot accept.
The inversion is strange and alarming and it won't, he knows, ever go away, no matter what happens to them. They could be locked saber to saber now, teeth bared and arms trembling, and he knows without having to even skim the surface of her mind let alone dive deep within it that the sentiment would not change. It's an acceptance, an understanding, that physically aches, and for as much as neither of them want to permit the other, there is no room between them for denial. He can't shut out the billow of hot, scalding anger that issues forth from the engine of her lungs, and he can't stop the oily slick of its counterpoint from slipping from him to her. They pushed too hard, too much, and there is no going back, there is no hiding from one another.
The opposition rips at him, not dissimilar to the way in which everything that he has ever done has torn him in two, but rather than sink down into it, give in to the brutalized anger and resentment that threatens to claw its way out of his open mouth, Kylo finds it easier to let the hard burn of her ignored tears find a mark within him as well. A tight heat that has nothing to do with with fire she has lit, nothing to do with the smell of burning flesh and melting hair, traces its way across Kylo's chest and chokes him. It is so different from the heartbeat of darkness making him smug, light, powerful not so long ago that he knows this can only be the agony afforded to him by the light, calling, heckling, demanding to be let in. He is a disaster. )
I am not hiding. ( The disdain that spikes any time that anyone mentions his mother returns, though it's clouded with an overall objective feeling of despair that he can't quell in the midst of this turmoil. Angry tears threaten, a solid, heavy lump rising in his throat at the thought of her - memories and imagined realities and the potential future that he cannot see beyond their jettison out of here - and Kylo - Ben is filled with as much abject misery and longing as he is hatred. They had not been good to each other, any of them, really. )
I don't know who else to be, and I won't - I can't apologize for who I am. You thought you could take the monster out of the creature and have the man left but there is no dividing line. There is no going back. There is no changing the outcome. There is only forward. I don't know what will happen. I don't - I just don't know. And you can't expect me to have it figured out yet. People don't - no one changes overnight. ( She expects him to, she worries that she herself will, and Kylo has a strange half-formed notion that he would, if he could. An idea that he might give her anything she wanted if she asked. But it goes as quickly as it comes, carried away with smoke and wind. ) This has been who I am for the last twenty years. Expecting it to go away because it scares you is naive.
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Nothing. Nothing at all. The culmination of everything that she is charging him with reduced to ashes, cinder. A battle fought and waged and won but lost. Dark, dark blood on his hands, darker than he could hope to wash away, and then bright pain dragging him under. It had been too much then, and it is too much now, a confusing jumble of thought and intention that leaves him feeling scraped raw. The loss, greater than leverage, hangs open and gaping between them, the both of them gathered on separate ledges of the horrible chasm that has opened between them, a pit of loss and bitter hurt for reasons that are different and the same. That is them in a nutshell, he and Rey: different but the same, the warped and cracked mirror, the opposing sides of the same coin. What she sees of herself in him, she hates, and what he sees of himself in her, he cannot accept.
The inversion is strange and alarming and it won't, he knows, ever go away, no matter what happens to them. They could be locked saber to saber now, teeth bared and arms trembling, and he knows without having to even skim the surface of her mind let alone dive deep within it that the sentiment would not change. It's an acceptance, an understanding, that physically aches, and for as much as neither of them want to permit the other, there is no room between them for denial. He can't shut out the billow of hot, scalding anger that issues forth from the engine of her lungs, and he can't stop the oily slick of its counterpoint from slipping from him to her. They pushed too hard, too much, and there is no going back, there is no hiding from one another.
The opposition rips at him, not dissimilar to the way in which everything that he has ever done has torn him in two, but rather than sink down into it, give in to the brutalized anger and resentment that threatens to claw its way out of his open mouth, Kylo finds it easier to let the hard burn of her ignored tears find a mark within him as well. A tight heat that has nothing to do with with fire she has lit, nothing to do with the smell of burning flesh and melting hair, traces its way across Kylo's chest and chokes him. It is so different from the heartbeat of darkness making him smug, light, powerful not so long ago that he knows this can only be the agony afforded to him by the light, calling, heckling, demanding to be let in. He is a disaster. )
I am not hiding. ( The disdain that spikes any time that anyone mentions his mother returns, though it's clouded with an overall objective feeling of despair that he can't quell in the midst of this turmoil. Angry tears threaten, a solid, heavy lump rising in his throat at the thought of her - memories and imagined realities and the potential future that he cannot see beyond their jettison out of here - and Kylo - Ben is filled with as much abject misery and longing as he is hatred. They had not been good to each other, any of them, really. )
I don't know who else to be, and I won't - I can't apologize for who I am. You thought you could take the monster out of the creature and have the man left but there is no dividing line. There is no going back. There is no changing the outcome. There is only forward. I don't know what will happen. I don't - I just don't know. And you can't expect me to have it figured out yet. People don't - no one changes overnight. ( She expects him to, she worries that she herself will, and Kylo has a strange half-formed notion that he would, if he could. An idea that he might give her anything she wanted if she asked. But it goes as quickly as it comes, carried away with smoke and wind. ) This has been who I am for the last twenty years. Expecting it to go away because it scares you is naive.