( The problem with leaving in a huff aboard a ship that is currently careening through space is that there is nowhere to go other than different wings of said ship. The problem with leaving in a huff aboard a ship that belonged to a father you recently murdered, a father whose association is stronger with no object other than the metal box that currently surrounds you, a father whose many transgressions and faults and failures could not be contained by the volume of said ship alone, is that no alternative wing of the ship is safe from further reminder of the very thing that you are trying to storm out on. Kylo supposes that, realistically, he could be storming out on Rey and Rey's perceptions of his inadequacies and anxieties - not fears, he won't call any of it fear - but they both know how intrinsically incorrect that would be.
He has to walk away, though, not only for the sake of his own self-preservation in terms of saving face in front of her but also - if the game board is any indication - in a very literal sense as well. Storming out of the main hold does nothing to quell the trembling that threads itself down through his arms and extends into the tendons and bones of his hands. He can feel the skin that he'd patched with gauze tear open again as tight fists become tighter and then searing pain flashes across his knuckles and down into the back of his hand and wrist as he turns a corner far from the confines of the hold and slams his coiled hand into a section of metal paneling. It doesn't have the same therapeutic factor of release as reducing pieces of metal to rubble or crushing bone and stopping air, and it has the added disadvantage of sending a spike of pain shooting through his own arm, but it gets the job done in providing an outlet for the anger that he feels.
And it needs channeled into something - in both their cases, it needs channeled, he can feel it; Rey possesses the same tendency toward dark rage as Kylo does, just in a smaller, better controlled dose - or they run the risk of damage the ship in a way that spells imminent doom for the both of them. So he punches a console and then punches it again, until his hand feels bruised and his vague, hazy reflection in the metal is distorted beyond recognition. With each strike, his eyes close as if to absorb the intensity of the impact, and all that he can see in those brief flashes of darkness is the drooped and sagging helmet that belonged to his grandfather.
It's distorted, too, melted down to nothing but a shadow of its former glory, and Kylo can't help but think of all the ways in which he still has not lived up to that expectation, all the ways in which Rey's assessment of him might actually be correct. He knows better than anyone that he's afraid. He lived too long in the shadow of numerous fears as a child and has inspired it and used it as a weapon too many times in his past not to be intimately familiar with the feeling. It led him to Snoke, in a way, and it guided him to walk the path that Snoke laid out for him, and it made him powerful and strong, but it still exists within him, and that's the burn that fills the back of his throat and bleeds down into his gut. It leaves him cold and clammy with uncertainty, forces him to consider the idea that maybe he has made a mistake in allowing everything that has transpired since and on Corellia to take place.
Weak, is the only thing that he hears over and over again in his head, and Kylo bows his face to the metal paneling in an attempt to cool the sweat that has collected on his forehead. But deep down within him, where that cluster of light still lives, still breathes, takes great heaping drags and claws at him in a desperate attempt to be heard, he knows that what he's done isn't wrong, and it isn't weak. Weakness is sinking under the black tide that sweeps in and carries him out under a starless night. The inherent difficulty of the rest of it, of resisting the easier, darker nature that he has mired himself in all these years, that is strength. Han Solo's face lives there, and Kylo remembers the expression on it so acutely that it starts a high-pitched buzzing sound ringing in his ears, and that image washes away that dilapidated mask and all the inferiority that comes with it, leaving him feeling angry and hollow and weak and empowered all at the same time.
It's too many things to be feeling at once, so he finishes off the wall with one final smash of a sore fist and sits down, the rippled surface of the panel dotting his location as it hovers just above and to the left of him. He does not reach out to Rey. )
no subject
He has to walk away, though, not only for the sake of his own self-preservation in terms of saving face in front of her but also - if the game board is any indication - in a very literal sense as well. Storming out of the main hold does nothing to quell the trembling that threads itself down through his arms and extends into the tendons and bones of his hands. He can feel the skin that he'd patched with gauze tear open again as tight fists become tighter and then searing pain flashes across his knuckles and down into the back of his hand and wrist as he turns a corner far from the confines of the hold and slams his coiled hand into a section of metal paneling. It doesn't have the same therapeutic factor of release as reducing pieces of metal to rubble or crushing bone and stopping air, and it has the added disadvantage of sending a spike of pain shooting through his own arm, but it gets the job done in providing an outlet for the anger that he feels.
And it needs channeled into something - in both their cases, it needs channeled, he can feel it; Rey possesses the same tendency toward dark rage as Kylo does, just in a smaller, better controlled dose - or they run the risk of damage the ship in a way that spells imminent doom for the both of them. So he punches a console and then punches it again, until his hand feels bruised and his vague, hazy reflection in the metal is distorted beyond recognition. With each strike, his eyes close as if to absorb the intensity of the impact, and all that he can see in those brief flashes of darkness is the drooped and sagging helmet that belonged to his grandfather.
It's distorted, too, melted down to nothing but a shadow of its former glory, and Kylo can't help but think of all the ways in which he still has not lived up to that expectation, all the ways in which Rey's assessment of him might actually be correct. He knows better than anyone that he's afraid. He lived too long in the shadow of numerous fears as a child and has inspired it and used it as a weapon too many times in his past not to be intimately familiar with the feeling. It led him to Snoke, in a way, and it guided him to walk the path that Snoke laid out for him, and it made him powerful and strong, but it still exists within him, and that's the burn that fills the back of his throat and bleeds down into his gut. It leaves him cold and clammy with uncertainty, forces him to consider the idea that maybe he has made a mistake in allowing everything that has transpired since and on Corellia to take place.
Weak, is the only thing that he hears over and over again in his head, and Kylo bows his face to the metal paneling in an attempt to cool the sweat that has collected on his forehead. But deep down within him, where that cluster of light still lives, still breathes, takes great heaping drags and claws at him in a desperate attempt to be heard, he knows that what he's done isn't wrong, and it isn't weak. Weakness is sinking under the black tide that sweeps in and carries him out under a starless night. The inherent difficulty of the rest of it, of resisting the easier, darker nature that he has mired himself in all these years, that is strength. Han Solo's face lives there, and Kylo remembers the expression on it so acutely that it starts a high-pitched buzzing sound ringing in his ears, and that image washes away that dilapidated mask and all the inferiority that comes with it, leaving him feeling angry and hollow and weak and empowered all at the same time.
It's too many things to be feeling at once, so he finishes off the wall with one final smash of a sore fist and sits down, the rippled surface of the panel dotting his location as it hovers just above and to the left of him. He does not reach out to Rey. )