( He works in silence for a few moments, watching her out of the corner of his eye with the sort of understanding that they will probably always regard one another in such a way. Sleep with one eye open or forgo sleep altogether in the interest of not waking up with a saber held to their own throat, tend to their wounds with their backs to the wall, mindful of what could come through the door. Kylo doesn't have the luxury of time to consider what could have been and what still might be given their situation - what might have been different had she listened to him on Starkiller and come with him; what might be different now, in the future, that he followed her down into the depths of his own head on Corellia - as Rey eventually picks up the thread of conversation much the same way Kylo picks up the long pieces of gauze once the ointment has stopped scorching his skin to begin wrapping his hands. )
It is a very narrow understanding of the world. ( His agreement with her statement is non-debatable, even if he hadn't spent years and years as a student under a teacher who believed wholeheartedly that pain as punishment and pain as tutelage were mutually exclusive concepts, even if her own perception of pain and what it means and what it's good for might ultimately be different from his own. He wraps and wraps, and when his right hand - dominant - is done, Kylo lets the gauze hang and scrounges around in the tin for a small pair of scissors, cutting the off-white piece without flourish and taping it down before moving onto his left hand. ) Pain is a teacher in its own right. To have never experienced it is to have never had any reason to grow or learn.
( The roll of gauze bounces off of his knee and pools on the ground at his feet, but Kylo calls it back to him without thinking, using the Force to lift it from the floor so that he can catch it in the palm of his hand and continue with the task at hand. They are both children of pain, though he would hazard a guess in saying that it has shaped them as two completely different people. His bloodline is a bloodline of pain, and without knowing decisively as to Rey's parentage, he would still feel confident in assuming that whoever they are or were, whatever they did or will have done, their lives were full of pain as well, if the hurts were great enough to leave a child behind to feast on sand and drink dirty water for the majority of her life were any indication. Ben Solo was born into a life that should have been free of pain, made to want for nothing, and the wound that he has carved and that has been carved in him in turn has done immeasurable hurt to an incalculable amount of people. The list continues to grow. )
It's inescapable, besides. ( He snips the final piece of gauze and tapes it down, flexing his fingers and stretching his hands to test the give of the material. They'll hold but he'll need to get a better, more permanent solution - maybe on Hapes - or risk some sort of infection. For now it will have to do. ) You either control it or let it control you, like anger.
( He's gotten marginally better at the latter though not entirely, as a result of the Supreme Leader's final stages of his training, ultimately incomplete but still instructive in their own right. Pain is something that he's always been able to use to his advantage, pushing him further, harder, longer, than he might be able to go otherwise, a burst of dark black blood in the bright white snow summoning a monster from the deep well of anger that ripples beneath his surface. Kylo has no place for any of it now, so despite the conversation, it doesn't manifest. Instead, he slips from the cargo container with the closed kit in his hands and shoves it across the floor back toward Rey as he settles down, cross-legged, and unclips his saber in the interest of taking it apart to clean off the mud and grime that has seeped into it as a result of the Corellian weather. )
no subject
It is a very narrow understanding of the world. ( His agreement with her statement is non-debatable, even if he hadn't spent years and years as a student under a teacher who believed wholeheartedly that pain as punishment and pain as tutelage were mutually exclusive concepts, even if her own perception of pain and what it means and what it's good for might ultimately be different from his own. He wraps and wraps, and when his right hand - dominant - is done, Kylo lets the gauze hang and scrounges around in the tin for a small pair of scissors, cutting the off-white piece without flourish and taping it down before moving onto his left hand. ) Pain is a teacher in its own right. To have never experienced it is to have never had any reason to grow or learn.
( The roll of gauze bounces off of his knee and pools on the ground at his feet, but Kylo calls it back to him without thinking, using the Force to lift it from the floor so that he can catch it in the palm of his hand and continue with the task at hand. They are both children of pain, though he would hazard a guess in saying that it has shaped them as two completely different people. His bloodline is a bloodline of pain, and without knowing decisively as to Rey's parentage, he would still feel confident in assuming that whoever they are or were, whatever they did or will have done, their lives were full of pain as well, if the hurts were great enough to leave a child behind to feast on sand and drink dirty water for the majority of her life were any indication. Ben Solo was born into a life that should have been free of pain, made to want for nothing, and the wound that he has carved and that has been carved in him in turn has done immeasurable hurt to an incalculable amount of people. The list continues to grow. )
It's inescapable, besides. ( He snips the final piece of gauze and tapes it down, flexing his fingers and stretching his hands to test the give of the material. They'll hold but he'll need to get a better, more permanent solution - maybe on Hapes - or risk some sort of infection. For now it will have to do. ) You either control it or let it control you, like anger.
( He's gotten marginally better at the latter though not entirely, as a result of the Supreme Leader's final stages of his training, ultimately incomplete but still instructive in their own right. Pain is something that he's always been able to use to his advantage, pushing him further, harder, longer, than he might be able to go otherwise, a burst of dark black blood in the bright white snow summoning a monster from the deep well of anger that ripples beneath his surface. Kylo has no place for any of it now, so despite the conversation, it doesn't manifest. Instead, he slips from the cargo container with the closed kit in his hands and shoves it across the floor back toward Rey as he settles down, cross-legged, and unclips his saber in the interest of taking it apart to clean off the mud and grime that has seeped into it as a result of the Corellian weather. )