[ The steady lift of his hand to match hers is genuine enough to surprise her, eyelashes fluttering as she glances briefly down, then back up to search him. Rey's heart aches with the weight of his question—that he feels like he must ask it, that he cannot trust good will, that he is so damnably cautious with taking hold of the life raft she offers him now—because she knows what it means. That question is one more of the many scars he bears from years of manipulation and cruelty, isolating him from the only people who could help him.
It leaves her short of breath, not only because it's overwhelming to conceptualize, but because she understands it too clearly. Her stoicism tapers off into the thick tone of eager, swelling hope, twisting her expression into one that almost pleads with him to allow her that. ]
I want to help you.
[ It doesn't fully answer his question, though, in that it doesn't adequately express why she feels so driven to offer him this hand up, a question she's avoided asking herself since it began. His insistent disbelief compels her to turn inward now and pinpoint that moment in the vision he'd shown her of the two of them, side-by-side in battle, playing off one another with seamless ease into a more devastating threat for the light or the dark than either could be on their own.
And it affords her a simple sense of clarity.
Even when he's beside her, training her, Luke Skywalker feels miles away, a relic of another time, lost long ago and returned only as a learning tool and a guide, not a companion. And among the Resistance, there are no others with the skill or sensitivity to be Jedi, to take up the mantle and use the Force for the light. The responsibility has fallen to Rey and left her, in the wake of Han's death, even armed with Finn's friendship, precisely where she started. Alone.
It's like she never left that desert in Jakku, why even the calm and focused corners of her mind that she reaches out to silence the loneliness as she suffers insomnia are an island, silent for its isolation, not its peace. For as long as she can remember, Rey has been alone, and now she's seen a glimpse of what it could be like if she weren't. The cool serenity of understanding settles over her features, drawing the intensity of her passion out like a sieve.
Killing Kylo Ren would mean killing the one person who understands her experience and how she perceives the world thanks to the lens of Force sensitivity, and shutting herself off forever from anyone who could offer that specific empathy to her, which is sadly impossible for Finn or Poe, and he has expressed the same interest himself in his desire to teach her, to groom her. She knows, based on Han's stories, that Kylo Ren is the one responsible for ripping away any other opportunity to meet students of the Jedi way. It is his fault that she feels this fear. And yet …
The lure is not enough to draw her from the light, but that selfish desire is enough to make her desperate to pull him free from the darkness.
Some mixture of shame, surprise, and resignation strike her features and she breaks Kylo Ren's gaze with this realization, dropping her eyes to the spot where his hand touches the glass. She doesn't recoil, not fully, but her eyes tell the full story—she knows why, now, and she cannot pretend at ignorance any longer. ]
I refuse to believe that our fate lies in destroying each other.
no subject
It leaves her short of breath, not only because it's overwhelming to conceptualize, but because she understands it too clearly. Her stoicism tapers off into the thick tone of eager, swelling hope, twisting her expression into one that almost pleads with him to allow her that. ]
I want to help you.
[ It doesn't fully answer his question, though, in that it doesn't adequately express why she feels so driven to offer him this hand up, a question she's avoided asking herself since it began. His insistent disbelief compels her to turn inward now and pinpoint that moment in the vision he'd shown her of the two of them, side-by-side in battle, playing off one another with seamless ease into a more devastating threat for the light or the dark than either could be on their own.
And it affords her a simple sense of clarity.
Even when he's beside her, training her, Luke Skywalker feels miles away, a relic of another time, lost long ago and returned only as a learning tool and a guide, not a companion. And among the Resistance, there are no others with the skill or sensitivity to be Jedi, to take up the mantle and use the Force for the light. The responsibility has fallen to Rey and left her, in the wake of Han's death, even armed with Finn's friendship, precisely where she started. Alone.
It's like she never left that desert in Jakku, why even the calm and focused corners of her mind that she reaches out to silence the loneliness as she suffers insomnia are an island, silent for its isolation, not its peace. For as long as she can remember, Rey has been alone, and now she's seen a glimpse of what it could be like if she weren't. The cool serenity of understanding settles over her features, drawing the intensity of her passion out like a sieve.
Killing Kylo Ren would mean killing the one person who understands her experience and how she perceives the world thanks to the lens of Force sensitivity, and shutting herself off forever from anyone who could offer that specific empathy to her, which is sadly impossible for Finn or Poe, and he has expressed the same interest himself in his desire to teach her, to groom her. She knows, based on Han's stories, that Kylo Ren is the one responsible for ripping away any other opportunity to meet students of the Jedi way. It is his fault that she feels this fear. And yet …
The lure is not enough to draw her from the light, but that selfish desire is enough to make her desperate to pull him free from the darkness.
Some mixture of shame, surprise, and resignation strike her features and she breaks Kylo Ren's gaze with this realization, dropping her eyes to the spot where his hand touches the glass. She doesn't recoil, not fully, but her eyes tell the full story—she knows why, now, and she cannot pretend at ignorance any longer. ]
I refuse to believe that our fate lies in destroying each other.