( For all the time it takes Rey to submerge herself in the practice, it takes Kylo twice as long. He can't divorce himself from the world around him as easily as she can, finding little comfort or security in the duo who stand watch over them, casting a wide net around Rey and him to shield them from view, likewise in the structure itself, so vulnerable to attack should the right bombardment fall, should the Order return to finish what the Resistance started. Fear clouds the path to peace, the calamity of his mind not quieting even as he actively works to dismantle his previous guards against the Supreme Leader in order to leave him open to the possibility of submerging himself.
It's a laborious process, focusing on his exhales, on her inhales, the distance that expands and contracts between them like a living, breathing organ. He knows that he has to commit but even in knowing that, it's difficult to disengage from the world around him. Kylo has spent full hours trying to achieve the sort of focus necessary for meditative tasks less substantial than this and found it taxing and difficult, borderline impossible for the tempest of his thoughts. It rankles him now, getting the sense that this comes as naturally to her as anything, which in turn distances him from detaching the way he needs to, rooting him firmly in this weakness and frustration. He stares at the wall behind her in an attempt to ground himself, the slight curl of her hair around the heightened point of her forehead, the slope of her neck, and then settles for the bridge of her nose before meeting the cut of her eyes across the distance between them.
The world grows to insurmountable extremes, too large to be contained within the walls of this room, universes spanning the space between fingers and stretching into infinity between them, mountains and plains and the roll of the ocean, before collapsing like a supernova.
He does not close his eyes but keeps them fixed on hers. Kylo is unsure of how long he sits like this, hands on his knees, watching the words form on her mouth and then not at all, the vaguely Imperial lilt of her accent clear in his head and then again in the atmosphere as it changes over time. The room is still the room but it's not, crowded with sand, the desert stretching before them under a cloudless night, pockmarked with stars and twin moons. One is the deep harvest red of the Corellian season; the other is so startlingly white that it looks carved from bone. He gets the sense that they are on Jakku, dunes rolling the sandstone plains like waves transfixed in time, stuck out of place like the scuttled Star Destroyer notoriously grounded during the planet's big battle. Wind touches the sweat on the back of his neck, even under the high fabric of his armor, and chills his skin while the moons cast odd shadows on the ground. His is long and lean as it stretches out behind him. Rey is twenty paces or less from him, and when he takes a step in her direction the ground supports him like solid stone even as he expects it to swallow him whole. )
Rey. ( Her name out of his mouth again. His own voice is clear and unobstructed, a direct channel between them. He finds her easily there, in the dark. ) Is this my mind, or yours?
no subject
It's a laborious process, focusing on his exhales, on her inhales, the distance that expands and contracts between them like a living, breathing organ. He knows that he has to commit but even in knowing that, it's difficult to disengage from the world around him. Kylo has spent full hours trying to achieve the sort of focus necessary for meditative tasks less substantial than this and found it taxing and difficult, borderline impossible for the tempest of his thoughts. It rankles him now, getting the sense that this comes as naturally to her as anything, which in turn distances him from detaching the way he needs to, rooting him firmly in this weakness and frustration. He stares at the wall behind her in an attempt to ground himself, the slight curl of her hair around the heightened point of her forehead, the slope of her neck, and then settles for the bridge of her nose before meeting the cut of her eyes across the distance between them.
The world grows to insurmountable extremes, too large to be contained within the walls of this room, universes spanning the space between fingers and stretching into infinity between them, mountains and plains and the roll of the ocean, before collapsing like a supernova.
He does not close his eyes but keeps them fixed on hers. Kylo is unsure of how long he sits like this, hands on his knees, watching the words form on her mouth and then not at all, the vaguely Imperial lilt of her accent clear in his head and then again in the atmosphere as it changes over time. The room is still the room but it's not, crowded with sand, the desert stretching before them under a cloudless night, pockmarked with stars and twin moons. One is the deep harvest red of the Corellian season; the other is so startlingly white that it looks carved from bone. He gets the sense that they are on Jakku, dunes rolling the sandstone plains like waves transfixed in time, stuck out of place like the scuttled Star Destroyer notoriously grounded during the planet's big battle. Wind touches the sweat on the back of his neck, even under the high fabric of his armor, and chills his skin while the moons cast odd shadows on the ground. His is long and lean as it stretches out behind him. Rey is twenty paces or less from him, and when he takes a step in her direction the ground supports him like solid stone even as he expects it to swallow him whole. )
Rey. ( Her name out of his mouth again. His own voice is clear and unobstructed, a direct channel between them. He finds her easily there, in the dark. ) Is this my mind, or yours?