( Her initial response is not the answer he is looking for, regardless of the sincerity in both her tone and the look she fixes him with. Rather than retaliating immediately, Kylo quiets the swell of annoyed, knee-jerk anger - he does not want her pity - and waits. It isn't easy. Patience has never been a strong card in the hand he works with, but he has the impression that what she grapples with internally is legitimate enough that he doesn't want to miss it by slamming the heel of his hand against the plane between them in an effort to shatter it. The thought does cross his mind, and he feels the keen absence of his saber as if it were a physical ache deep in the bones and muscles in his hands and arms, but he quiets it.
Instead of pulling back and then surging forward, his hand remains on the glass, watching conscious thought flicker across her face and behind her eyes like a series of candles being lit, one after another, after another. He doesn't need the Force to pick them out one by one, gathering them together like the pebbles he had cupped in his palm in the forest, but before he can assign them any real value or merit in his own mind, she looks away from him, cuts her eyes to where their hands might be pressed together if not for the paneling separating skin from skin, tendon from tendon, bone from bone. The slight bow of her head as she focuses the point of her perception toward the five-point star of his left hand is enough of a response in and of itself, and before she can open her mouth, Kylo has the distinct impression that he has an idea of what she's going to say in the same moment she does. It still isn't what he's expecting.
He watches the bow of her lips form syllables and speak but the weight and story in her eyes paint a clear enough picture for him without her words to solidify it. He holds very still where he stands, something in him shifting and settling into place. The image, the idea, of them, half-remembered, that he had shown her what feels like lifetimes and galaxies away, now, burns his retinas as if it's a reality. Darkness in him wells and sings, a chorus of echoes and whispers and chants, then quiets, dims, falls silent as he remembers laughter, tastes salt, smells the tang of the ocean and wet grass, thick moss, smooth stone beneath his palms, damp biting at his knee through his pant leg. Kylo thinks he can feel the warmth from her hand spilling through the glass and seeping into his own, and he pulls away so that the cool, filtered air of the downed shuttle can chill his skin where his palm has begun to sweat. )
I don't believe that either.
( It's a lot. When he speaks, it's with the careful, guarded quality of someone who does everything alone, who shares nothing of himself or his agenda with anyone unless specifically ordered to do so. Even Hux, who so frequently operates on a wavelength in tandem with his own, has no such advantage. None of his Knights. Captain Phasma. No one. The totality of his loneliness has not been so precise and crushing as Rey's - Rey, who spent decades on a desert planet, who sung herself to sleep on her shoreline dreams, still alone in her self-isolation even when she could imagine comfort anywhere, still alone in the bracket of arms she has fallen into. Rey: the island - but it has been present, it has been constant. It rests in the darkness within him and thrives. For her to reach for him with that sort of statement, to present it honestly and plainly with the promise of her intentions in what she plans to do, the look on her face wrought with the weight of it - it digs fingers into him and hooks, no matter how deftly he attempts resistance. )
I don't know the precise length of his reach or how Skywalker's presence might be problematic in his attempts to establish contact. Or yours. But if he were able to do anything other than reach out toward me, as you suggested, it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Leader's ire manifested itself in a physical way. ( He finally admits it after ignoring the question long enough for them to arrive at this bend in the conversation. With everything else that's on the table between them, it seems pointless to withhold information from her that will only assist him in the end. His tone is still reluctant, however, as if confessing a sin he's been holding onto for twenty years. ) His reaction depends largely upon what Hux tells him, and my absence, both from the Finalizer and from his perception of the Force. I haven't felt him try to reach out yet, but I'm hardly searching for him or opening the channel up to welcome him to look around. I doubt he would appreciate what he finds there. He will, though, eventually, recognize that something isn't quite as it should be.
( On Starkiller Base, he had screamed traitor at FN-2187's back so roughly that his throat had felt hoarse after. A voice inside of him shouts with the same intensity, and it resounds throughout him, all the way down to the soles of his boots. )
no subject
Instead of pulling back and then surging forward, his hand remains on the glass, watching conscious thought flicker across her face and behind her eyes like a series of candles being lit, one after another, after another. He doesn't need the Force to pick them out one by one, gathering them together like the pebbles he had cupped in his palm in the forest, but before he can assign them any real value or merit in his own mind, she looks away from him, cuts her eyes to where their hands might be pressed together if not for the paneling separating skin from skin, tendon from tendon, bone from bone. The slight bow of her head as she focuses the point of her perception toward the five-point star of his left hand is enough of a response in and of itself, and before she can open her mouth, Kylo has the distinct impression that he has an idea of what she's going to say in the same moment she does. It still isn't what he's expecting.
He watches the bow of her lips form syllables and speak but the weight and story in her eyes paint a clear enough picture for him without her words to solidify it. He holds very still where he stands, something in him shifting and settling into place. The image, the idea, of them, half-remembered, that he had shown her what feels like lifetimes and galaxies away, now, burns his retinas as if it's a reality. Darkness in him wells and sings, a chorus of echoes and whispers and chants, then quiets, dims, falls silent as he remembers laughter, tastes salt, smells the tang of the ocean and wet grass, thick moss, smooth stone beneath his palms, damp biting at his knee through his pant leg. Kylo thinks he can feel the warmth from her hand spilling through the glass and seeping into his own, and he pulls away so that the cool, filtered air of the downed shuttle can chill his skin where his palm has begun to sweat. )
I don't believe that either.
( It's a lot. When he speaks, it's with the careful, guarded quality of someone who does everything alone, who shares nothing of himself or his agenda with anyone unless specifically ordered to do so. Even Hux, who so frequently operates on a wavelength in tandem with his own, has no such advantage. None of his Knights. Captain Phasma. No one. The totality of his loneliness has not been so precise and crushing as Rey's - Rey, who spent decades on a desert planet, who sung herself to sleep on her shoreline dreams, still alone in her self-isolation even when she could imagine comfort anywhere, still alone in the bracket of arms she has fallen into. Rey: the island - but it has been present, it has been constant. It rests in the darkness within him and thrives. For her to reach for him with that sort of statement, to present it honestly and plainly with the promise of her intentions in what she plans to do, the look on her face wrought with the weight of it - it digs fingers into him and hooks, no matter how deftly he attempts resistance. )
I don't know the precise length of his reach or how Skywalker's presence might be problematic in his attempts to establish contact. Or yours. But if he were able to do anything other than reach out toward me, as you suggested, it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Leader's ire manifested itself in a physical way. ( He finally admits it after ignoring the question long enough for them to arrive at this bend in the conversation. With everything else that's on the table between them, it seems pointless to withhold information from her that will only assist him in the end. His tone is still reluctant, however, as if confessing a sin he's been holding onto for twenty years. ) His reaction depends largely upon what Hux tells him, and my absence, both from the Finalizer and from his perception of the Force. I haven't felt him try to reach out yet, but I'm hardly searching for him or opening the channel up to welcome him to look around. I doubt he would appreciate what he finds there. He will, though, eventually, recognize that something isn't quite as it should be.
( On Starkiller Base, he had screamed traitor at FN-2187's back so roughly that his throat had felt hoarse after. A voice inside of him shouts with the same intensity, and it resounds throughout him, all the way down to the soles of his boots. )