( He waits until her footsteps have disappeared down the hallway, splaying one palm against the lurching, metallic skeleton of the ship as it hurtles itself through tree and cloud on its way to kiss atmo goodbye and break into the cold, unflinching silence of space. Alone in this portion of the freighter, the cresting reality of the situation is able to press down on him on all sides, and with Rey deposed to deal with the navigational controls, prepping the ship and her own ability to outmaneuver the First Order fleet that waits for them at the other end of their controlled ascent, Kylo allows the growing nausea of what he's done on Corellia to buckle and blindside him. It's been kept at the edges of his perception since he woke on the command shuttle, intensified following the sever in the Force that he had felt when he clipped Snoke sloppily from his own mind, and it leaves his mouth thick with saliva and the taste of bile as he sets his mind to the task of what it is he has to do.
What waits for him on the other side of this endeavor is a region of reality as unexplored as the Unknown Regions, pockets of deep space that crush gravity and turn energy back in on itself. Kylo can't search his own feelings to determine whether or not the decision that he makes is the correct one, but he knows ultimately that it is the only one. Much as the choices he had made to deliver him to the First Order had been choices born of his own desperation and beliefs, he knows now that every move that he makes is a step that will determine the course of his path and how rocky or smooth the terrain is. What waits at the end is a mystery, although the fleeting images that he has seen of Snoke's demise color his perceptions with the conjoined red and blues of plasma swinging in vicious, tandem streaks.
It's impossible to find a spot on the ship that does not remind him in so many ways of its previous owner, though Kylo avoids heading in the direction of the cockpit more than anything. He finds himself in the galley, settling onto a low bench opposite the counter and heating units designed to function as a stove top. The banality of the environment strikes him as ironic, given the task that he is charged with carrying out, but there's little time to reconsider or weight his options in light of their climbing altitude. His fingers curl into fists where his hands bracket the slope of his knees, and Kylo leans forward to brace his forearms on his thighs, waiting for the nausea to abate before grinding his molars together and turning the questing lens of his gaze inward.
Snoke is waiting for him like a cloud of poison gas when the walls come down.
Kylo Ren drops to his knees in the projected auditorium of his own mind, rough stone biting his skin to bloody as he hits the ground and bows his head, showing lines of bone and muscle and thin skin under the tangle of dark hair that peeks from underneath the manipulated image of his helmet. It's an exercise in perfect deception, and as such he constructs brick by brick the walls and shields required to keep Rey from seeing should she choose to look. She can't be here, can't infect the projection, the connection, with the spray of sand and her wash of bright, warm sunshine, applied like a burn. He can only make room for the frostbitten breath of the Supreme Leader as fingers that carry the texture of dry, dead leaves ghost over the back of his neck, turning inward to bite into his skin and apply pressure to caverns of his mind behind his eyes.
Kylo Ren. His master's voice is the cold wash of a dead, salty sea in his ears and his throat, and Kylo knows better than to look up, knows better than to argue. The pressure in his cranium builds until it is unbearable pain, a sharp, white light picking the locks of his mind to reveal the severity of his betrayal. In the waking world, Kylo bites down on his cheek so sharply that blood flows into his mouth and saturates his tongue with copper. The cutlery on the galley table vibrates, whether from the impact of lift off or the sweeping current of his acute focus and rage as it ripples through the Force. Supreme Leader, he responds inside the valley in his mind, sharp stones cutting through the leather of his gloves as he falls to knees and hands underneath the onslaught of Snoke's power. Master.
It's not going to work. He feels it in his bones, up and down the tight muscles of his arms, his attention drawn and quartered down so many different paths. The weight of his betrayal is so heavy between them, the channel thrown open to let Snoke flood into Kylo's consciousness like a battering ram. Even if the connection has been broken, Snoke is still supreme for a reason, and his power is consuming in its totality, so much that Kylo finds himself unable to even look up under the weight of Snoke's punishment, filtered across time and space and star systems bursting with life. His rage is precise, a perfect beam of focused disappointment filled with a cleansing fire that neither Skywalker nor Organa could ever hope to posses. It licks underneath Kylo's ribs and burns him from the inside out as Snoke shoves into his head to see what he sees through the projected, false image that he is shown.
Kylo Ren lies with more conviction than he ever has.
He is bound at the hands and flanked on either side by Rey and Skywalker, the General across from him as she confers with Ematt while staring at the black slash of her son's figure as it sits incapacitated aboard the ship that once belonged to his father. Gone are the streaks of grease that stain his skin and force his hair to stand on end; gone is the plain black flightsuit, swallowed instead by the surcoat and armor that he wears underneath the damaged - torn and dirty - shroud of his cloak, hood drawn to hide the resemblance that he bears to Han Solo; gone, too, is the welcome weight of the saber that hangs presently at his hip, carried instead in Rey's curious hands as she ghosts her thumb over the ignition switch, watching him from the rise of Luke Skywalker's shoulder as they, too, speak quietly about what should be done with him. He projects his captivity with shame and fury, pouring every ounce of himself into it in order to make it all the more likely that he reality he creates is an actuality.
Your failure has been spectacular, boy, but the sacrificial slaughter that you offer may redeem your weaknesses yet, Snoke says to him, and Kylo buckles under the Supreme Leader's discipline. The heating unit explodes. )
and then i slept for like nine hours anyway it's fine you are forgiven
What waits for him on the other side of this endeavor is a region of reality as unexplored as the Unknown Regions, pockets of deep space that crush gravity and turn energy back in on itself. Kylo can't search his own feelings to determine whether or not the decision that he makes is the correct one, but he knows ultimately that it is the only one. Much as the choices he had made to deliver him to the First Order had been choices born of his own desperation and beliefs, he knows now that every move that he makes is a step that will determine the course of his path and how rocky or smooth the terrain is. What waits at the end is a mystery, although the fleeting images that he has seen of Snoke's demise color his perceptions with the conjoined red and blues of plasma swinging in vicious, tandem streaks.
It's impossible to find a spot on the ship that does not remind him in so many ways of its previous owner, though Kylo avoids heading in the direction of the cockpit more than anything. He finds himself in the galley, settling onto a low bench opposite the counter and heating units designed to function as a stove top. The banality of the environment strikes him as ironic, given the task that he is charged with carrying out, but there's little time to reconsider or weight his options in light of their climbing altitude. His fingers curl into fists where his hands bracket the slope of his knees, and Kylo leans forward to brace his forearms on his thighs, waiting for the nausea to abate before grinding his molars together and turning the questing lens of his gaze inward.
Snoke is waiting for him like a cloud of poison gas when the walls come down.
Kylo Ren drops to his knees in the projected auditorium of his own mind, rough stone biting his skin to bloody as he hits the ground and bows his head, showing lines of bone and muscle and thin skin under the tangle of dark hair that peeks from underneath the manipulated image of his helmet. It's an exercise in perfect deception, and as such he constructs brick by brick the walls and shields required to keep Rey from seeing should she choose to look. She can't be here, can't infect the projection, the connection, with the spray of sand and her wash of bright, warm sunshine, applied like a burn. He can only make room for the frostbitten breath of the Supreme Leader as fingers that carry the texture of dry, dead leaves ghost over the back of his neck, turning inward to bite into his skin and apply pressure to caverns of his mind behind his eyes.
Kylo Ren. His master's voice is the cold wash of a dead, salty sea in his ears and his throat, and Kylo knows better than to look up, knows better than to argue. The pressure in his cranium builds until it is unbearable pain, a sharp, white light picking the locks of his mind to reveal the severity of his betrayal. In the waking world, Kylo bites down on his cheek so sharply that blood flows into his mouth and saturates his tongue with copper. The cutlery on the galley table vibrates, whether from the impact of lift off or the sweeping current of his acute focus and rage as it ripples through the Force. Supreme Leader, he responds inside the valley in his mind, sharp stones cutting through the leather of his gloves as he falls to knees and hands underneath the onslaught of Snoke's power. Master.
It's not going to work. He feels it in his bones, up and down the tight muscles of his arms, his attention drawn and quartered down so many different paths. The weight of his betrayal is so heavy between them, the channel thrown open to let Snoke flood into Kylo's consciousness like a battering ram. Even if the connection has been broken, Snoke is still supreme for a reason, and his power is consuming in its totality, so much that Kylo finds himself unable to even look up under the weight of Snoke's punishment, filtered across time and space and star systems bursting with life. His rage is precise, a perfect beam of focused disappointment filled with a cleansing fire that neither Skywalker nor Organa could ever hope to posses. It licks underneath Kylo's ribs and burns him from the inside out as Snoke shoves into his head to see what he sees through the projected, false image that he is shown.
Kylo Ren lies with more conviction than he ever has.
He is bound at the hands and flanked on either side by Rey and Skywalker, the General across from him as she confers with Ematt while staring at the black slash of her son's figure as it sits incapacitated aboard the ship that once belonged to his father. Gone are the streaks of grease that stain his skin and force his hair to stand on end; gone is the plain black flightsuit, swallowed instead by the surcoat and armor that he wears underneath the damaged - torn and dirty - shroud of his cloak, hood drawn to hide the resemblance that he bears to Han Solo; gone, too, is the welcome weight of the saber that hangs presently at his hip, carried instead in Rey's curious hands as she ghosts her thumb over the ignition switch, watching him from the rise of Luke Skywalker's shoulder as they, too, speak quietly about what should be done with him. He projects his captivity with shame and fury, pouring every ounce of himself into it in order to make it all the more likely that he reality he creates is an actuality.
Your failure has been spectacular, boy, but the sacrificial slaughter that you offer may redeem your weaknesses yet, Snoke says to him, and Kylo buckles under the Supreme Leader's discipline. The heating unit explodes. )