( Kylo does not have to plant the images within her mind as some kind of ruse, nor does he have to work exceptionally hard in order to conjure them. They exist as if they have always been there, stored in an old corner and waiting for their chance at rotation. Summoning them into whirring, crippling life is as easy as recalling a recent memory or a favored daydream, lurking just below the surface of conscious thought but never so far as to be invisible under the hazy sheen of oily water, close enough to the top that they roll forward unbidden, exchanged between the two of them as easy as any thought has passed between them. His own skin feels the bite of craggy rock against her knees when Rey is forced to the ground, and the ragged rip of her throat mirrors his own as his voice fades into her own clamoring answer. He thinks that maybe Rey might even be able to feel the bite of Ji's fingers into the fleshy web of his hand or the hard beat of her pulse under his other, but before Kylo has a chance to impress it upon her further, she is shutting him out, as well as she can.
The door between them closes with a snap that makes him physically recoil, a sensation not at all dissimilar to the way she had thrown him out of her mind on Starkiller. It's a perceived and physical blow all at once, and Kylo feels the whiplash effect of it as comes up dry and hard against the barrier of her thoughts, the mental fortifications that he has encountered before in various ways - not all of them the same as Starkiller, some with the careful consideration of his palm testing the feel and give of her ability and desire to keep him out - with equal amounts frustration and awed humiliation.
Rey leaves him alone in the dark, where he is carried on warm whispers that blow cool underneath the main current, and adds insult to injury by still existing in the milky, in-between world that comprises their connection when they are not facing in the same direction, and it is only through his dogged pursuit, this obsessive compulsion, that he glimpses very briefly - filtered through the dark and the dank and the heavy curtain of thought that urges him to do it, just do it, it can be over. - the nauseating horror that she experiences. It staggers him somewhat, enough that when she moves to step away from him, Kylo finds that the upper half of his body follows her, as if his breastbone were connected by string to her rib cage. Hardly the first time that he has experienced such a sensation while mired without the hurricane of dark energy that drags him down and down and swaddles him in inky black, the feeling itself is not unwelcome, but it is a distraction, as much as her answering accusation is, and within the enclosure of that distraction, Kylo realizes the folly in his own inability to dismiss it, boiled down to the barest sentiments and easiest translations: he does not want her to be wrong.
The thought calls out like shattered glass, a single, high note of perfect stillness. Darkness surges in retaliation, and with nowhere to go but into its embrace, Kylo relents and lets it smother him, much more willing to be engulfed by the ease of what comes naturally than to fight tooth and nail for a desire that has battered him raw and bloody for the better part of twenty years. His teeth bare, reflecting the conjoined light of their sabers and bending his face into a meaner countenance, almost wolfish in appearances. The completion of his half-turn back toward Rey reaches its apex, and his arm stretches long across his body to keep Ji pinned inexpertly where he has her. )
Don't be so nai - ( Kylo's hard look and spiteful tone are reserved for Rey only, and in that disadvantage, Ji finds her window. He realizes his mistake too late, when Ji moves quicker than he thought capable. She drops his hand and reaches for her belt, toward the back of the long sweep of her cloak, so quickly and so peripherally that the movements blur together. Then she jams the business end of a vibroblade into his thigh.
Kylo roars with the black agony of it, sending shockwaves down through tendon and muscle until it hits bone, and instinctively he caves inward and jerks up at the same time, slashing at the Knight with the flat of his blade. She's already moved out of fatal reach, coughing and gulping in deep lungfuls of air filtered through the mask, but he manages to glance the small of her back with the tip of his lightsaber, and Ji howls, too, the pain an enraging, open wound in the Force, in the tunnel, all of it around them trembling, rocks skittering, dirt falling like water, as their separate, individual energies clash against one another like conflicting currents. )
no subject
The door between them closes with a snap that makes him physically recoil, a sensation not at all dissimilar to the way she had thrown him out of her mind on Starkiller. It's a perceived and physical blow all at once, and Kylo feels the whiplash effect of it as comes up dry and hard against the barrier of her thoughts, the mental fortifications that he has encountered before in various ways - not all of them the same as Starkiller, some with the careful consideration of his palm testing the feel and give of her ability and desire to keep him out - with equal amounts frustration and awed humiliation.
Rey leaves him alone in the dark, where he is carried on warm whispers that blow cool underneath the main current, and adds insult to injury by still existing in the milky, in-between world that comprises their connection when they are not facing in the same direction, and it is only through his dogged pursuit, this obsessive compulsion, that he glimpses very briefly - filtered through the dark and the dank and the heavy curtain of thought that urges him to do it, just do it, it can be over. - the nauseating horror that she experiences. It staggers him somewhat, enough that when she moves to step away from him, Kylo finds that the upper half of his body follows her, as if his breastbone were connected by string to her rib cage. Hardly the first time that he has experienced such a sensation while mired without the hurricane of dark energy that drags him down and down and swaddles him in inky black, the feeling itself is not unwelcome, but it is a distraction, as much as her answering accusation is, and within the enclosure of that distraction, Kylo realizes the folly in his own inability to dismiss it, boiled down to the barest sentiments and easiest translations: he does not want her to be wrong.
The thought calls out like shattered glass, a single, high note of perfect stillness. Darkness surges in retaliation, and with nowhere to go but into its embrace, Kylo relents and lets it smother him, much more willing to be engulfed by the ease of what comes naturally than to fight tooth and nail for a desire that has battered him raw and bloody for the better part of twenty years. His teeth bare, reflecting the conjoined light of their sabers and bending his face into a meaner countenance, almost wolfish in appearances. The completion of his half-turn back toward Rey reaches its apex, and his arm stretches long across his body to keep Ji pinned inexpertly where he has her. )
Don't be so nai - ( Kylo's hard look and spiteful tone are reserved for Rey only, and in that disadvantage, Ji finds her window. He realizes his mistake too late, when Ji moves quicker than he thought capable. She drops his hand and reaches for her belt, toward the back of the long sweep of her cloak, so quickly and so peripherally that the movements blur together. Then she jams the business end of a vibroblade into his thigh.
Kylo roars with the black agony of it, sending shockwaves down through tendon and muscle until it hits bone, and instinctively he caves inward and jerks up at the same time, slashing at the Knight with the flat of his blade. She's already moved out of fatal reach, coughing and gulping in deep lungfuls of air filtered through the mask, but he manages to glance the small of her back with the tip of his lightsaber, and Ji howls, too, the pain an enraging, open wound in the Force, in the tunnel, all of it around them trembling, rocks skittering, dirt falling like water, as their separate, individual energies clash against one another like conflicting currents. )