[ In a manner slow with numbness, Rey reaches up to take the rag from Kylo, not because she needs it, but because her physical presence seems useless in the bog of conflict that her mind sifts through, and anything to keep it absently distracted is welcome. She tugs at the corners of the rag, twisting it, working over his reply.
He speaks objectively, and she notices, never fully resigning himself to the task or disagreeing with it, but presenting all of his dissent as objective irrationality that threatens the plan as a whole. Kylo Ren maintains a deliberate emotional distance from the whole thing, which seems absurd to Rey who can't imagine how he could have anything but an emotional reaction to being asked to throw himself back at the feet of the master he'd betrayed, the master that she'd implicitly assured he would be protected from.
He should be angry, she decides. If he weren't being stubbornly obtuse, he would be furious, and then she wonders if it means she should be privately grateful that he is restraining it. Finn had told stories of Kylo Ren's anger, whispered among stormtroopers. If he got as angry as he deserved to get, they might not get the Falcon off the ground after all when the time came. ]
It's not the only strategy, and the General didn't come up with it. I did. [ Though it would be easy, she won't permit him to blame Leia for her own pragmatism. Rey dusts the suggestion breezily off her shoulders, straightening in the door frame as stubborn resolve draws up the length of her spine. ] Regardless of what you do, the Falcon should draw off a sufficient portion of the fleet by rumor and supposition alone. The consequences for me will be the same. [ And she's determinedly not looking forward to outrunning the whole damn First Order fleet to protect a man who tried to kill her, who killed the father figure who passed this ship down to her. ]
But you could ensure it was the whole fleet that pursued us, spare the Resistance the risk of another battle, even one easily won. [ Each battle was another opportunity for her friends to die; she would spare them it, if she could, but Kylo had no such ties. His mother, his uncle, she did not expect they meant anything to him at all. Not after what she had seen him do to his father. ] I know I can shake the fleet off our trail. Can you shake Snoke? [ She searches his expression, softening somewhat from the near-ultimatum she lays out in offering the strategy out to him as a choice that he must ultimately make for himself. Perhaps the first that (she hopes) comes with no persistent and prying telepathic influence attached. ] Do you want to find out?
sobs i'm so bad at retaining reference material, but i just read 5 pages about sabacc and i'm like y
He speaks objectively, and she notices, never fully resigning himself to the task or disagreeing with it, but presenting all of his dissent as objective irrationality that threatens the plan as a whole. Kylo Ren maintains a deliberate emotional distance from the whole thing, which seems absurd to Rey who can't imagine how he could have anything but an emotional reaction to being asked to throw himself back at the feet of the master he'd betrayed, the master that she'd implicitly assured he would be protected from.
He should be angry, she decides. If he weren't being stubbornly obtuse, he would be furious, and then she wonders if it means she should be privately grateful that he is restraining it. Finn had told stories of Kylo Ren's anger, whispered among stormtroopers. If he got as angry as he deserved to get, they might not get the Falcon off the ground after all when the time came. ]
It's not the only strategy, and the General didn't come up with it. I did. [ Though it would be easy, she won't permit him to blame Leia for her own pragmatism. Rey dusts the suggestion breezily off her shoulders, straightening in the door frame as stubborn resolve draws up the length of her spine. ] Regardless of what you do, the Falcon should draw off a sufficient portion of the fleet by rumor and supposition alone. The consequences for me will be the same. [ And she's determinedly not looking forward to outrunning the whole damn First Order fleet to protect a man who tried to kill her, who killed the father figure who passed this ship down to her. ]
But you could ensure it was the whole fleet that pursued us, spare the Resistance the risk of another battle, even one easily won. [ Each battle was another opportunity for her friends to die; she would spare them it, if she could, but Kylo had no such ties. His mother, his uncle, she did not expect they meant anything to him at all. Not after what she had seen him do to his father. ] I know I can shake the fleet off our trail. Can you shake Snoke? [ She searches his expression, softening somewhat from the near-ultimatum she lays out in offering the strategy out to him as a choice that he must ultimately make for himself. Perhaps the first that (she hopes) comes with no persistent and prying telepathic influence attached. ] Do you want to find out?