( Kylo tastes ice and crunches grit between his teeth as Rey's sudden full body weight is thrown into his back like an oncoming speeder, one of her ankles catching the trunk of his calf in the process and sending them both to the ground underneath the blind force of her intent. He's in the middle of flinching back from the explosion of something pressurized underneath the cave's surface when she wrestles him to the ground, shaved ice pricking the exposed skin along the back of his neck, Snoke's fingers intent on snuffing the life from him, from them, bringing them to heel. He can see it all written clearly in the spray of debris as he keeps his eyes wide open and then -
It's all gone.
He sits up in the tall grass once she's moved off of him, nose assaulted by the perfume of dense forest, of pine and dirt. His mother's perfume, personalized by Han Solo's permanently dirty hands moving over her skin every time he was planet-side. Through the trees behind them, a home is half-visible, open windows white with curtains. Melting ice has turned the earth underneath of him to damp topsoil, and it smears down the front of him where Rey had pushed his shoulders down, covered him, exposed the back of her neck and the knots of her spine to whatever onslaught could have fallen on them. The band of her arm pressing into the long line of his shoulders is still a buzzing memory of pressure as he digs one palm into the ground and pushes himself up and to his knees. Snoke's voice, his presence, is a sharper one, and Kylo turns his scarred face up to the treetops as if expecting the Supreme Leader to be baring down on them through the canopy branches, but there is nothing, just the warm wash of sunshine.
The first real breath that he takes is deep, a steady inhale through his nose and out through his mouth. He bows his head, letting sweat and melted ice collect on his forehead before he swipes it away with the back of a hand that shakes, despite his best efforts to keep it still. There is dirt on his face, and he wipes at it. His stomach is in knots, a nausea rises and bile burns the back of his throat as it becomes more and more clear what he has done. Repercussions have not set in yet, not quite, and he isn't even sure if what they have accomplished here, now, will be enough to keep Snoke from possessing him at a later time, once they return from this, but he has never before shut his master out with such finality before. Kylo feels sick with power, and he has to look away from the trees in order to make the world stop spinning.
Rey meets his eyes over the long grass, and neither of them say a thing. Whatever has built between them in the past now hangs in the balance like a weighted band. He doesn't know what that means, what it will mean, and is loathe to examine it following this last encounter but it doesn't go away. It doesn't lessen or abate. It stretches warm between them, an open hand, and he returns the nod that she affords him, offering some semblance of the affirmation that she seeks in looking to him. Even though he can't be sure of their success with absolute certainty, Kylo trusts the churning in his gut and the strange, static emptiness that fills his mind where before there was the reassuring presence of a voice that had always been there.
Silence stretches, just the wind wandering softly through the trees, the sunlight warming the exposed skin that's dirty with sweat and dirt and, inexplicably, sand. Finally, he finds his voice somewhere in the back of his throat. )
no subject
It's all gone.
He sits up in the tall grass once she's moved off of him, nose assaulted by the perfume of dense forest, of pine and dirt. His mother's perfume, personalized by Han Solo's permanently dirty hands moving over her skin every time he was planet-side. Through the trees behind them, a home is half-visible, open windows white with curtains. Melting ice has turned the earth underneath of him to damp topsoil, and it smears down the front of him where Rey had pushed his shoulders down, covered him, exposed the back of her neck and the knots of her spine to whatever onslaught could have fallen on them. The band of her arm pressing into the long line of his shoulders is still a buzzing memory of pressure as he digs one palm into the ground and pushes himself up and to his knees. Snoke's voice, his presence, is a sharper one, and Kylo turns his scarred face up to the treetops as if expecting the Supreme Leader to be baring down on them through the canopy branches, but there is nothing, just the warm wash of sunshine.
The first real breath that he takes is deep, a steady inhale through his nose and out through his mouth. He bows his head, letting sweat and melted ice collect on his forehead before he swipes it away with the back of a hand that shakes, despite his best efforts to keep it still. There is dirt on his face, and he wipes at it. His stomach is in knots, a nausea rises and bile burns the back of his throat as it becomes more and more clear what he has done. Repercussions have not set in yet, not quite, and he isn't even sure if what they have accomplished here, now, will be enough to keep Snoke from possessing him at a later time, once they return from this, but he has never before shut his master out with such finality before. Kylo feels sick with power, and he has to look away from the trees in order to make the world stop spinning.
Rey meets his eyes over the long grass, and neither of them say a thing. Whatever has built between them in the past now hangs in the balance like a weighted band. He doesn't know what that means, what it will mean, and is loathe to examine it following this last encounter but it doesn't go away. It doesn't lessen or abate. It stretches warm between them, an open hand, and he returns the nod that she affords him, offering some semblance of the affirmation that she seeks in looking to him. Even though he can't be sure of their success with absolute certainty, Kylo trusts the churning in his gut and the strange, static emptiness that fills his mind where before there was the reassuring presence of a voice that had always been there.
Silence stretches, just the wind wandering softly through the trees, the sunlight warming the exposed skin that's dirty with sweat and dirt and, inexplicably, sand. Finally, he finds his voice somewhere in the back of his throat. )
You didn't have to tackle me.
( Then he turns and dry heaves into the grass. )