( The answer to her question hangs between them in the air, thick and heavy with the weight of expectation, of knowing better. Kylo harbors no illusions as to whether or not she knows the truth: if Solo hadn't told her the particulars of that past, then Skywalker surely had, whether in a quest to make her understand Kylo himself more or to understand Skywalker better. Or to simply give her a picture of the past and what she would be going up against in the future. He isn't sorry, either way. Maybe it's willful ignorance, a distinct stubbornness to look beyond the present veil to the vast unknown beyond once they breach it, but he can't conceptualize the remorse that the Resistance might deem necessary or expect. Not here, not with the weight of what she's pushing him toward pooling in his hands like muddy water. )
I killed them all. ( His voice is plain, and he halts abruptly, boots cracking down on a particularly loud collection of twigs and branches, dead leaves and thorns torn from bushes and wildflower brambles, and looks at her. There's no malice in his voice when he goes on, leaving room for a plethora of possibilities in defining what roots itself there. ) I thought I had. ( A pause heavy with a thousand unsaid things, and then Kylo turns his head as if being beckoned toward the sound of someone calling his name. He stares for a long moment into the break in the trees and steps forward again without directing her. ) This way.
( Yavin peeks through the trees in the forest like a scar, looming on the western side of the moon with the claustrophobic promise of impact. He remembers staring at the gas giant from his window when he was Ben and wondering if the two would ever collide, if Yavin would ever kiss the treetops before knocking its moon out of orbit, crack the surface in half and cover it in darkness before propelling itself throughout the galaxy on a quest to the end of all things. Now Yavin winks at them with light from the system's star before dropping out of existence behind cloud cover, dark and heavy with the threat of rain, of lightning, the shuffle of their meditative state honing in on the next piece of the verifiable puzzle.
If the darkness that had encroached upon them when they stood in the snowy manifestation of Starkiller Base had been anything to go by, what waits for them on the steps of Skywalker's rag and bones academy will be consuming in a way that he has not felt, quite possibly, since he was barely out of childhood; in a way that Rey may not have felt in her entire life, certainly not on Starkiller Base or in any of her training with her master, never mind her time spent in the camps of the Resistance. The memory of that day exists like a black spot in the tapestry of events that have shaped him, stitched with exquisite and loving detail, and it becomes a reality as soon as they step out of the treeline.
It's Yavin IV and it isn't, some nameless place in a collection of images weaved together to create something both of memory and of manipulation. It wasn't raining the day that he struck them all down, but the promise of precipitation was there and is now. The sky hangs and hung low with fat, gray clouds, the sound of thunder very distant and soft but present on the horizon. The grounds are tensely silent, a crackling electricity that has nothing to do with the approaching accumulation of a storm and everything to do with the static shock of burning ozone that so typically follows a lightsaber battle. It's still clinging to their clothing hours after their skirmish on Corellia, threaded under their skin as a permanent perfume. It's met with a copper tang and smell not unlike scorched iron as he leads her toward a building not unlike the Rebel base - now a relic - that marks Yavin IV's landscape. Kylo's skin tingles underneath his clothing, an itching in his fingers. He feels the darkness here, too, as keenly as he had that day. )
Your family sent you away for a reason. ( The possibility that he may have had something to do with it, his actions here, given her sensitivity and what someone may have recognized that she'd become, does not escape him even now. ) They thought that you'd be better off alone than with them. Maybe they thought that they were protecting you from something or sparing you some harsh fate by sending you away and marooning you on Jakku. ( He's looking at her with all the intensity that he had bestowed upon her on Starkiller Base. No one else has seen this day. Even Snoke has only seen images, the act itself proof enough of Kylo's unwavering loyalty and dedication. What he offers now is just a scratch on the surface, but it's a scratch all the same. ) Han Solo and Leia Organa sent their son away, too. They abandoned him. They marooned him in a place when they realized what was happening to him and who he was going to become. Solo - ( He fumbles, regains his balance. ) - was weak from the beginning. Organa couldn't find the strength necessary to do what needed to be done to protect her son, so she sent him to Skywalker. The one person she thought could change the course of things.
( Rey and Kylo are in the building. Hallways span off in different directions, some leading down and some leading up. Three bodies are crumbled on the floor. There are no lightsabers anywhere. The bite of blood and burnt metal is thick in their mouths. )
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I killed them all. ( His voice is plain, and he halts abruptly, boots cracking down on a particularly loud collection of twigs and branches, dead leaves and thorns torn from bushes and wildflower brambles, and looks at her. There's no malice in his voice when he goes on, leaving room for a plethora of possibilities in defining what roots itself there. ) I thought I had. ( A pause heavy with a thousand unsaid things, and then Kylo turns his head as if being beckoned toward the sound of someone calling his name. He stares for a long moment into the break in the trees and steps forward again without directing her. ) This way.
( Yavin peeks through the trees in the forest like a scar, looming on the western side of the moon with the claustrophobic promise of impact. He remembers staring at the gas giant from his window when he was Ben and wondering if the two would ever collide, if Yavin would ever kiss the treetops before knocking its moon out of orbit, crack the surface in half and cover it in darkness before propelling itself throughout the galaxy on a quest to the end of all things. Now Yavin winks at them with light from the system's star before dropping out of existence behind cloud cover, dark and heavy with the threat of rain, of lightning, the shuffle of their meditative state honing in on the next piece of the verifiable puzzle.
If the darkness that had encroached upon them when they stood in the snowy manifestation of Starkiller Base had been anything to go by, what waits for them on the steps of Skywalker's rag and bones academy will be consuming in a way that he has not felt, quite possibly, since he was barely out of childhood; in a way that Rey may not have felt in her entire life, certainly not on Starkiller Base or in any of her training with her master, never mind her time spent in the camps of the Resistance. The memory of that day exists like a black spot in the tapestry of events that have shaped him, stitched with exquisite and loving detail, and it becomes a reality as soon as they step out of the treeline.
It's Yavin IV and it isn't, some nameless place in a collection of images weaved together to create something both of memory and of manipulation. It wasn't raining the day that he struck them all down, but the promise of precipitation was there and is now. The sky hangs and hung low with fat, gray clouds, the sound of thunder very distant and soft but present on the horizon. The grounds are tensely silent, a crackling electricity that has nothing to do with the approaching accumulation of a storm and everything to do with the static shock of burning ozone that so typically follows a lightsaber battle. It's still clinging to their clothing hours after their skirmish on Corellia, threaded under their skin as a permanent perfume. It's met with a copper tang and smell not unlike scorched iron as he leads her toward a building not unlike the Rebel base - now a relic - that marks Yavin IV's landscape. Kylo's skin tingles underneath his clothing, an itching in his fingers. He feels the darkness here, too, as keenly as he had that day. )
Your family sent you away for a reason. ( The possibility that he may have had something to do with it, his actions here, given her sensitivity and what someone may have recognized that she'd become, does not escape him even now. ) They thought that you'd be better off alone than with them. Maybe they thought that they were protecting you from something or sparing you some harsh fate by sending you away and marooning you on Jakku. ( He's looking at her with all the intensity that he had bestowed upon her on Starkiller Base. No one else has seen this day. Even Snoke has only seen images, the act itself proof enough of Kylo's unwavering loyalty and dedication. What he offers now is just a scratch on the surface, but it's a scratch all the same. ) Han Solo and Leia Organa sent their son away, too. They abandoned him. They marooned him in a place when they realized what was happening to him and who he was going to become. Solo - ( He fumbles, regains his balance. ) - was weak from the beginning. Organa couldn't find the strength necessary to do what needed to be done to protect her son, so she sent him to Skywalker. The one person she thought could change the course of things.
( Rey and Kylo are in the building. Hallways span off in different directions, some leading down and some leading up. Three bodies are crumbled on the floor. There are no lightsabers anywhere. The bite of blood and burnt metal is thick in their mouths. )
They all failed.