[ Anger flares, bright and hot enough for him to feel it, but it's a fleeting burst of energy that fades as quickly as it came, a supernova dying out to an ember: none of it directed at the faceless shapes that occupy her memories, but at Kylo for assuming himself in the position to ask such things. Reminding herself of the mind walk she'd taken with him not so long ago quiets her indignation somewhat, but turnabout is not always fairplay, and it still sticks in her teeth.
Still. She knows precisely the conclusions he would draw from her silence: Kylo Ren is a creature of pain and misery, for he has steeped in it without reprieve for too long. He was taken young enough to be forged in it, and she cannot make him forget it in a day, so she doesn't pretend to try. If she offers him no answer, he will substitute his own, and she does not need to have a direct line to his mind to read the tense grudge he holds against his own family for slights that she cannot understand—slights that she understands less now that she has come up against Snoke even secondhand, for how could any of them have hoped to keep him out?
So instead, she takes the moment to finish chewing the last of the ration bar, recycles the packaging in a vacuumed receptacle in the side of a pantry cabinet, and gets to her feet. ]
Of course not. [ She shakes her head, a burn in the back of her throat dying for a way to express how layers of sentiment complicate the feeling beyond mere anger. ] If you mean to ask if it hurts, of course it does. [ Which rebuffs him somewhat, as if scolding him for poking his finger through an open wound and wiggling it around until she squirmed. ] But I'm not angry. I don't know them enough, don't understand enough about why they did it, to feel angry.
[ The persistent image of her mind of a shuttle blasting off Jakku, Unkar Plutt's thick, slimy fingers wrapped around her pole-thin arm, sticks in her mind and nags her, a lapsed transmission that can do nothing but repeat. No matter how often she cycles it, it won't expand, and she can't retrieve any of the corrupted data. It's just gone, with the faces of the parents she lost—or who lost her, however deliberately. ]
They're out there somewhere. Maybe one day, I'll meet them and decide if I should be.
no subject
Still. She knows precisely the conclusions he would draw from her silence: Kylo Ren is a creature of pain and misery, for he has steeped in it without reprieve for too long. He was taken young enough to be forged in it, and she cannot make him forget it in a day, so she doesn't pretend to try. If she offers him no answer, he will substitute his own, and she does not need to have a direct line to his mind to read the tense grudge he holds against his own family for slights that she cannot understand—slights that she understands less now that she has come up against Snoke even secondhand, for how could any of them have hoped to keep him out?
So instead, she takes the moment to finish chewing the last of the ration bar, recycles the packaging in a vacuumed receptacle in the side of a pantry cabinet, and gets to her feet. ]
Of course not. [ She shakes her head, a burn in the back of her throat dying for a way to express how layers of sentiment complicate the feeling beyond mere anger. ] If you mean to ask if it hurts, of course it does. [ Which rebuffs him somewhat, as if scolding him for poking his finger through an open wound and wiggling it around until she squirmed. ] But I'm not angry. I don't know them enough, don't understand enough about why they did it, to feel angry.
[ The persistent image of her mind of a shuttle blasting off Jakku, Unkar Plutt's thick, slimy fingers wrapped around her pole-thin arm, sticks in her mind and nags her, a lapsed transmission that can do nothing but repeat. No matter how often she cycles it, it won't expand, and she can't retrieve any of the corrupted data. It's just gone, with the faces of the parents she lost—or who lost her, however deliberately. ]
They're out there somewhere. Maybe one day, I'll meet them and decide if I should be.