( He cocks an eyebrow at her but doesn't immediately say anything, working the face off one of the emitter shrouds and running his finger the length of the piece, following the bow of the metal and rubbing away any lingering traces of mud that he can find. It's been cleaned, somewhat, he notices, and the coiling realization that it was probably Skywalker who had cleaned it while he had been inspecting the crude assembly settles low in Kylo's abdomen with the sort of slow burning simmer that lends itself to later explosive disasters. He doesn't like that someone else had his hands on what's his, and he likes less that the Jedi was likely taking careful stock and catalog while examining the blade. He likes even less that there was a measure of kindness and good will extended from one party to the other with the decision to clean the majority of his saber, like an olive branch reaching beyond the act of returning Kylo's blade to him at all.
While Rey is on the other side of the room from him, occupying the same space and able to see the careful series of expressions that track across his face if she's paying close enough attention, Kylo doesn't stop to think about it too hard. Instead, he reassembles the emitter shroud and begins the process of checking the other for the same treatment, fairly certain of what he'll find there. As such, it seems like a long time before he follows up his own inquiry with an actual question, and Kylo glances up at her to judge the caliber of her expression before plunging in with both hands and feet. )
Are you angry at your family for leaving you on Jakku?
( He gets the impression that he has no right to ask the question just as she has no right to go stomping around inside his head and look at his doubts and fears, but here they are, and here they continue to be. Space junk orbiting in one another's gravity, caught up in the inertia of their mutual, distant goals and a perverted sense of duty. She's seen some of him and he's seen some of her, and he remembers with perfect clarity the personification of her loneliness not only in her own mind on Starkiller but also in the darkened dome of their own projected consciousnesses, twin moons bathing the desert sands in alternating light. He remembers her imagined realities for them, the inventions that she had drafted for herself in an effort to explain away the abandonment of a four-year-old to a desert graveyard like Jakku. And, of course, the implication of his own involvement in that outcome.
He could be responsible, but Kylo doesn't know for sure and it seems like he might never. As such, he's careful to keep his tone appropriate for the topic at hand, treading carefully, almost lightly, around memories and perceptions that he took without asking to begin with and then experienced without trying to take the second time around. )
no subject
While Rey is on the other side of the room from him, occupying the same space and able to see the careful series of expressions that track across his face if she's paying close enough attention, Kylo doesn't stop to think about it too hard. Instead, he reassembles the emitter shroud and begins the process of checking the other for the same treatment, fairly certain of what he'll find there. As such, it seems like a long time before he follows up his own inquiry with an actual question, and Kylo glances up at her to judge the caliber of her expression before plunging in with both hands and feet. )
Are you angry at your family for leaving you on Jakku?
( He gets the impression that he has no right to ask the question just as she has no right to go stomping around inside his head and look at his doubts and fears, but here they are, and here they continue to be. Space junk orbiting in one another's gravity, caught up in the inertia of their mutual, distant goals and a perverted sense of duty. She's seen some of him and he's seen some of her, and he remembers with perfect clarity the personification of her loneliness not only in her own mind on Starkiller but also in the darkened dome of their own projected consciousnesses, twin moons bathing the desert sands in alternating light. He remembers her imagined realities for them, the inventions that she had drafted for herself in an effort to explain away the abandonment of a four-year-old to a desert graveyard like Jakku. And, of course, the implication of his own involvement in that outcome.
He could be responsible, but Kylo doesn't know for sure and it seems like he might never. As such, he's careful to keep his tone appropriate for the topic at hand, treading carefully, almost lightly, around memories and perceptions that he took without asking to begin with and then experienced without trying to take the second time around. )