[ With almost childlike patience, Rey sits with her knees bent, fingernails picking at the top seam of her boot while he speaks, offering to him rapt attention in the form of softly parted lips and a brow that furrows the longer he goes, so certain, so closed off, yet so telling.
She does not have to reach into his mind to understand how Snoke has driven him so desperate. It's in the lapses in his speech, the certain steadiness, and even the absent chaos of the swirling stones in his palm. Experience speaks through him, painting vivid pictures of torture and suffering, of what it must have taken to make Han Solo's child kneel, of what needling persuasions and visions he'd used to convince Ben Solo to reimagine himself as Kylo Ren.
It is not the terrible things that have happened to him that cause her heart to ache for him, but the certainty with which he claims that Snoke would not dismiss the task to Kylo Ren to prove himself, and the reluctant, pause-laden honesty with which he offered mercy despite it all. He cannot see for himself the foothold she has gained with him—perhaps for the best, or he would readily sever it—or he will not see it. Snoke would, if any image of him that Leia had described held any truth.
Before now, her insistence was always with peace in mind, driven by the conviction with which General Organa reached for her son but with the constant motive for peace being Rey's only real buy-in. Now, watching him muddle through the cloying darkness and smoke that she knows pervades his mind, she sees the flicker of a candle that carried in its flame Leia's hope.
Compassion is the only weapon against the Dark Side; Rey didn't need Master Skywalker to teach her that one (though he had given words to the thought). She sees it there in Kylo Ren, barely gasping at the surface as he tries to drown it in an ocean of suffering and hate. One hand reaches up, as if on instinct she might reach for him, but her fingers curl as her hand reaches her waist, staying there a moment.
It's gone, then, and she presses one palm to the earth to push herself to her feet, dusting her hands off and stepping forward to gaze down at him. For a moment, she doesn't speak, only stares down at his bent form and the rocks he juggles, weighing her power against his—and her will. ]
All that power. [ The wastefulness goes implied by his demonstration of how impotent he is to go against the will of the Supreme Leader. Slowly, Rey shakes her head, almost mourning, as she stands disarmed over him, hands loosely hanging at her sides. ] You told me once that you wanted to show me the ways of the Force. [ After a beat, she adds, ] I want to try something; will you let me?
[ The question is deliberate and heavy transposition of their first encounters, when no permission was asked, when power was exerted for power's sake simply because it could. What Kylo Ren would take, Rey would ask for, even after he hadn't offered her the same courtesy. ]
no subject
She does not have to reach into his mind to understand how Snoke has driven him so desperate. It's in the lapses in his speech, the certain steadiness, and even the absent chaos of the swirling stones in his palm. Experience speaks through him, painting vivid pictures of torture and suffering, of what it must have taken to make Han Solo's child kneel, of what needling persuasions and visions he'd used to convince Ben Solo to reimagine himself as Kylo Ren.
It is not the terrible things that have happened to him that cause her heart to ache for him, but the certainty with which he claims that Snoke would not dismiss the task to Kylo Ren to prove himself, and the reluctant, pause-laden honesty with which he offered mercy despite it all. He cannot see for himself the foothold she has gained with him—perhaps for the best, or he would readily sever it—or he will not see it. Snoke would, if any image of him that Leia had described held any truth.
Before now, her insistence was always with peace in mind, driven by the conviction with which General Organa reached for her son but with the constant motive for peace being Rey's only real buy-in. Now, watching him muddle through the cloying darkness and smoke that she knows pervades his mind, she sees the flicker of a candle that carried in its flame Leia's hope.
Compassion is the only weapon against the Dark Side; Rey didn't need Master Skywalker to teach her that one (though he had given words to the thought). She sees it there in Kylo Ren, barely gasping at the surface as he tries to drown it in an ocean of suffering and hate. One hand reaches up, as if on instinct she might reach for him, but her fingers curl as her hand reaches her waist, staying there a moment.
It's gone, then, and she presses one palm to the earth to push herself to her feet, dusting her hands off and stepping forward to gaze down at him. For a moment, she doesn't speak, only stares down at his bent form and the rocks he juggles, weighing her power against his—and her will. ]
All that power. [ The wastefulness goes implied by his demonstration of how impotent he is to go against the will of the Supreme Leader. Slowly, Rey shakes her head, almost mourning, as she stands disarmed over him, hands loosely hanging at her sides. ] You told me once that you wanted to show me the ways of the Force. [ After a beat, she adds, ] I want to try something; will you let me?
[ The question is deliberate and heavy transposition of their first encounters, when no permission was asked, when power was exerted for power's sake simply because it could. What Kylo Ren would take, Rey would ask for, even after he hadn't offered her the same courtesy. ]