[ In the steady grip of his voice, she hears the misery yet trickle in like it's filtering over smooth rocks and crashing around within him. Although it may not manifest in desperation to avoid the dark, it is desperation all the same—a thirst to reconcile these conflicting halves of himself and quell their constant battle.

That much, at least, she can sympathize with, and it helps her stay soft in a place where all she wants is to be hard and unforgiving. She feels, and the crack of her voice sounds, genuinely regretful in her disappointing reply. ] I can only show you the way.

[ Close enough now, she searches his face, taking in the pulse of muscle in his cheek as his jaw grinds, the twitch of his mouth as he tries to gnaw through the gristle of his conflict as if he could find a solution by pushing it around. ]

Your darkness isn't mine to banish, but I believe you know what is to come. There is no light or dark, not without the other. You can only have peace once you've accepted both.

[ No one hovered around her through her childhood to flinch at every tantrum and tearful night, dreading it would be the tipping point for the battle waging within, just as no one took her by the hand to guide her into the light. She had to hold the light within herself while searching for clarity in her rage, which was otherwise lacked utility in the wastelands of Jakku. ]

But I don't need to help you embrace the darkness: you've already done that. [ Snoke had seen fit to cultivate in Kylo Ren the understanding that his darkness was as natural to him as breathing, a component of his fully realized self, inextricable from the identity he forged for himself in manhood. ] You need to come to grips with the light that you've tried so hard for so long to snuff out.

You began to run from it so long ago. Can you remember?