( This is familiar ground. Wave after wave of hot rage rolls off of her, chokes the room like a heat wave, barely contained and ripping through and from her with ferocity, and her eyes fill and threaten to spill as she grabs him. Muscle memory jumps to attention at her touch, reaching out to encircle the band of her arm with fingers tight as a bracelet, an aggressive parody of a handshake, but before he can utilize any of his superior physical strength against her, Rey is shoving him back, disgust and abhorrence fresh on her tongue, in her posture. He lets her go easily, unsure of what might happen should they come to trading blows in this shared space, and the heels of his boots squeak against the tiled floor, smearing blood.
He surges forward, bound maybe from advancing on her with any amount of violence or aggression that he might normally employ but hardly stopped from filling this space with himself, dominating the small chamber by bearing down on her. The darkness in him is all his own, no manifestation of past atrocities, no subtle influence from the outside. Ben Solo was dark before Kylo Ren emerged from him, after all. )
What did you think you were going to see? ( One step in her direction closes the distance between them, and Kylo gets up into her personal space in a way that is the same yet different from all previous iterations. There are no barriers here, physically or otherwise, no hiding or recoiling without advance. He's more than a head taller than her, has to stoop to bring himself within adequate eye contact, but he does it, showing teeth when he talks. ) What were you expecting to find? ( Kylo takes a step and attempts to crowd her back away from the center of the room, hands curled into tight fists at his sides. Were this reality, the skin of his hands would have split by now. ) I have no illusions about the things that I've done that have brought me here. I know who's to blame for what happened, just as much as I know that no matter what happens now or in the future, or what you think, there's no happy ending waiting in the arms of the people you believe were doing what they thought was right when they traded one voice for another. Because that's the reality of it. That's what they did. And this - this is what I did.
( He steps back, breath quickly coming and going, all the signs of a trademark conniption brewing but bottling right at the surface. The center of the room is five paces away and he takes them, fingers clenching and unclenching, white-knuckled and then awash with the rush of blood underneath his skin. His hands are shaking with something that's barely contained, balancing on the hairline fracture of two sides pulling within him. He feels like screaming, like he's going to vibrate out of the armor of his skeleton and shake apart the entire illusion brick by metaphorical brick, like he's going to sink down into dark water and kick until his lungs burn, alone underneath the bleak chop of the current where they left him, the current that he believed Snoke pulled him from. )
I was ten when she sent me to him. When she couldn't - when it became clear to her that she was powerless to stop what was happening. Luke was overconfident. ( It's the first time that name has come out of his mouth in over a decade. ) Snoke got louder. The Dark Side got louder. ( The dark water churns, fills him to the fingertips, threatening to spill from ears and mouth and nose and eyes. Kylo gets the sensation that if he opens his mouth again, murky water will rush out of him and drown them. It swells in the back of his throat, raising like a stone and settling hard behind his Adam's apple. His head fills with the weight of it, lashing out through the Force like a tidal wave, and it only occurs to him moments after he swallows and finds his throat too full of black salt water to actually do so that what he's feeling isn't anger or hatred or disgust. It's despair. ) It's too late. How can you say it isn't?
no subject
He surges forward, bound maybe from advancing on her with any amount of violence or aggression that he might normally employ but hardly stopped from filling this space with himself, dominating the small chamber by bearing down on her. The darkness in him is all his own, no manifestation of past atrocities, no subtle influence from the outside. Ben Solo was dark before Kylo Ren emerged from him, after all. )
What did you think you were going to see? ( One step in her direction closes the distance between them, and Kylo gets up into her personal space in a way that is the same yet different from all previous iterations. There are no barriers here, physically or otherwise, no hiding or recoiling without advance. He's more than a head taller than her, has to stoop to bring himself within adequate eye contact, but he does it, showing teeth when he talks. ) What were you expecting to find? ( Kylo takes a step and attempts to crowd her back away from the center of the room, hands curled into tight fists at his sides. Were this reality, the skin of his hands would have split by now. ) I have no illusions about the things that I've done that have brought me here. I know who's to blame for what happened, just as much as I know that no matter what happens now or in the future, or what you think, there's no happy ending waiting in the arms of the people you believe were doing what they thought was right when they traded one voice for another. Because that's the reality of it. That's what they did. And this - this is what I did.
( He steps back, breath quickly coming and going, all the signs of a trademark conniption brewing but bottling right at the surface. The center of the room is five paces away and he takes them, fingers clenching and unclenching, white-knuckled and then awash with the rush of blood underneath his skin. His hands are shaking with something that's barely contained, balancing on the hairline fracture of two sides pulling within him. He feels like screaming, like he's going to vibrate out of the armor of his skeleton and shake apart the entire illusion brick by metaphorical brick, like he's going to sink down into dark water and kick until his lungs burn, alone underneath the bleak chop of the current where they left him, the current that he believed Snoke pulled him from. )
I was ten when she sent me to him. When she couldn't - when it became clear to her that she was powerless to stop what was happening. Luke was overconfident. ( It's the first time that name has come out of his mouth in over a decade. ) Snoke got louder. The Dark Side got louder. ( The dark water churns, fills him to the fingertips, threatening to spill from ears and mouth and nose and eyes. Kylo gets the sensation that if he opens his mouth again, murky water will rush out of him and drown them. It swells in the back of his throat, raising like a stone and settling hard behind his Adam's apple. His head fills with the weight of it, lashing out through the Force like a tidal wave, and it only occurs to him moments after he swallows and finds his throat too full of black salt water to actually do so that what he's feeling isn't anger or hatred or disgust. It's despair. ) It's too late. How can you say it isn't?
( What a mess. )