[ More acutely than she can feel the stab of pain each time his leg stretches out to support his weight, Rey can feel the humbled unease with which he accepts her assistance, and allows it to settle a blanket of quiet over their progression. She never flags in her ascent, not because there is no burn in her muscles or because she is not halfway to the point of collapse, but because there is no other option for her to weigh against their progress. Like most things she has resolved herself to in life, it simply must be done.
When finally she hauls herself over the top of the cliff, she doesn't lay flat like she wants to, breath heaving, muscles screaming with the long-coming respite, but instead turns immediately back over the edge to reach for him again, a silent offering of further assistance because she knows if he falls, she won't be proficient enough with the use of the Force in such a way—in the way he excels at most—in order to save him from more than a hundred feet of sheer drop. ]
We were right. Good view of the mine, and I think I can make out the ship too. [ Her words lean more towards optimistic urging than anything braggadocious, born out of the desire to believe it was worth something and that they'll make it up here. ]
( Kylo finds himself, inexplicably, waiting for the extension of her hand over the lip of rockface that juts out above him, not so high that he couldn't reach it if he stood on the balls of his feet but far enough that the stretch his leg encounters resonates within him like a drumbeat, a pulse, a jump of muscle on bone. He grits his teeth all the same - against the discomfort, the pressure, the acknowledgment of a weakness that accepting her assistance indicates whether she views it that way or not - and reaches for her hand on the tail end of a small boost, wedging his hand against the slope they have been climbing and lunging for her grip that way, the tip of his right foot catching against the loose gravel and pebbles and providing the resistance necessary to get him where he needs to be.
Rey is already speaking by the time he clears the the edge, not bothering to glance behind him to the darkness of the valley below that could have swallowed either one or both of them at any time. She might not have immediately rolled onto her back the moment that she pulled herself over to the topside of the outcropping they now occupy, but Kylo does. Having suspended his illusions of prideful superiority, having convinced himself that there is little point in providing her with the illusory facade of strength and invincibility when she can literally see through him all the way down to the marrow, feel what he feels, taste what he tastes, Kylo pulls himself the rest of the way onto their perch by dragging his right flank across the ground before turning over onto his back and lying prone, like a turtle. )
Yes. Terrific view. ( Stars have started to eek out of the purple-blue-black velvet of the night sky, little pinpricks of bright light winking from light years away. For one contemplative moment, punctured by the rhythm of his breathing, a winded, dragging sound that ends in one long exhale through his nose, Kylo wonders whether or not Snoke is peering at him through the permeating telescopic lens of his own power. It comes and goes as quickly as the wave of his hand toward Rey's back, though the echo of its presence doesn't fade so quickly. ) I'm admittedly not looking forward to the trip back down. ( He raises his head slightly from where it has fallen to the dusty ground to peer at her. ) Sit down before you fall down.
[ She hauls him up over the edge, not letting go of her clasp around his palm until he's rolling over and gasping, and only then does Rey accept that he's firmly enough on solid ground that she can draw back. At first, she tries to sway to her feet, but she crumbles back to one knee, woozy with exhaustion, just in time for Kylo's color commentary from over on the ground nearby.
It prompts her to cast a glimpse inward, assess the energy that stirs within her, or lack thereof, and actually consider how far she can reasonably push herself, consider that she's already well beyond it. Many a time, on Jakku, she pushed herself further still. She can remember passing out from sunstroke, starvation, fatigue, shaking with all of the above until she was all but useless, but incapable do anything else for she was her only way out of it.
The situation is not precisely the same now, but it remains difficult for her to set aside that context when she knows that in this too her life depends on her constant action; more than that, most of the galaxy depends on it. Perhaps not on her individually, but on her efforts to the greater Resistance.
Only Kylo's identification of the problem causes her to slow. She turns to sink into a sitting position, legs bent, and catches her breath with her elbows propped on her kneecaps. A moment passes in silence before she drops her head, shoulders heaving, and finds words. ]
Down will be easier. I've got steel cord; we can rappel. [ She pats the bag on her hip. ] Let's just hope it was for nothing, or we'll have worse than a climb down to deal with.
( Kylo glances over only at the rustling sound her movement causes, eyes skipping immediately from the sweaty contours of her face down to where her hand rests on the bag at her waist. The thought of repelling down the rockface in that moment brings with it about as much delight as scaling it had in the first place, and after curling his hand into a fist to test the tightness of tendons and bones, he stretches his hand along the elevated length of his thigh as he bends his knee and plants one foot against the ground. Dressing it has certainly done him some favors - as has Rey's attention to her own injuries, which he can still perceive through the sheen of his own shoddy focus, uninterested in shutting her out entirely when their mutual survival hinges on their ability not only to cooperate with one another but to be just as aware - but it will only continue to slow him down the longer they remain here.
For a moment he considers asking her if she has any experience with healing - he certainly doesn't, for reasons that are as obvious as they are insipid - but ultimately resigns himself to bacta and bandages for as long as it takes them to return to the Resistance. A wave of apprehension bordering on nausea threatens to overtake him, and Kylo lets his curled hand fall back to the ground in the vague intimation of slamming a fist into something, the effect somewhat lost with the rapidity of his breathing slowing to something approaching normal. Lying on the ground now affords time and thoughts he has been successfully distracting himself from the opportunity to catch up with him. What will happen when she brings him back to the Resistance? He's too exhausted to rightfully consider anything beyond the inevitable, and it rings with a hollow resignation in his own head, even as he pushes himself to his elbows. )
Are you planning on putting me on your back the way you did on Corellia? ( It's not a real question, as evidenced by his haste to cover it up by pushing himself fully into a sitting position, legs bent at long, bracketed angles out in front of him. Now that he can see the entirety of the valley below, it is actually quite the view, but he hasn't taken stock or consideration of anything that frivolous since long before he left to join Skywalker as a child. ) I get the impression - ( He begins after a quiet moment, pushing his hair out of a damp, sweaty face, and beginning to tug his gloves off. ) - that there won't be a second wave. Aurren Ren may have tailed Ji to this location in an effort to steal some of her perceived glory in being the one to dismantle us, or they may have collaborated in an effort to see the job done. But Ji would be unlikely to share any news of a lead until she could investigate it for herself. She's too determined, and too proud.
[ Listening to his assessment, Rey stares down into the basin that makes up the mine below, as if searching out evidence of his words in the dust—evidence, or some refutation. Hazel eyes linger briefly on the mouth of the mine that Ji had chased them from (not a single grain of sand moves, of course, and she doesn't expect it to, but she can't help looking) before she lifts them and returns them to Kylo, nodding her understanding. ]
We'll be lucky if that's true. [ Lucky, she says, firmly avoiding the notion of counting on it and knowing that Kylo has already implicitly signed on for the same in climbing up here with her at all. He could have decided at the bottom of the cliff that the chances were slim enough that anyone followed that the vantage point wouldn't do them any good, but he didn't. At least he wasn't so self-destructive as to relinquish the logic of 'better safe than sorry.' ]
I'd still rather take shifts if it's the same with you. [ She turns her attention back towards the mine. She wipes seat from her face and onto the fabric of her shirt, smearing around more of the soot and ash from the mine. Maybe Chewie had found time to refill the water reservoirs on the Falcon before they took off—that'd be a nice surprise to look forward to tomorrow. ] Get some sleep. I'll wake you in a few hours to trade off.
( He is careful in the way that he observes her - casually, though peripherally, diverting the bulk of his attention out toward the carpet of the moon stretching before and beneath them, the shape of the Falcon somehow daunting and huge despite their relative distance from it, the mouth of the mine a tiny pinprick even as he narrows in on it, everything distorting and blurring under the weight of prolonged exhaustion and exertion. His hands are dirty when he examines them, a ring of black soot and dirt and dust separating the paler pigment of his fingers from the length of his wrists before his sleeves begin, knuckles lined with congealed dirt, pressed into the grooves of his skin and running the lengths of his palms. Kylo harbors no illusions that the rest of him is in a similar state, can feel the collection of dirt and perspiration down into his collar as well as he can underneath his fingernails.
He says nothing of it, and even were Rey not within arm's reach, he would say nothing of it. He has breathed in ash and smoke and tasted coppery, metallic blood and dirt far too often for it to be of any consequence now, just as he has felt the bite and sting of injury, blaster or otherwise, too often for the pain in his leg to be anything more than routine. For a moment, he thinks to run his fingertips over the extension of the scar that divides his face as if to test the memory of the pain he had felt in prodding it in the days after she had delivered it as it compares to the discomfort that he feels now, but it's a fleeting impulse made less by the command in her tone, however much it stands to ignite the stubborn streak of pride within him that wants to argue with her for the sake of arguing, if nothing else.
Although there is something else. )
You aren't going to climb back down and take the ship, leave me here? ( He intends for there to be hostility in his tone, but either he is more tired than he realizes or is willing to admit or the nature of their relationship has changed further without his awareness of the fact. If anything, he sounds resigned, leaning into the weight of the possibility as if it were an inevitability, even as he knows how ridiculous that it sounds, coming from him, how ridiculous it is to ask her, as someone who has been left behind in the most substantial of ways. The fact remains, though, and the tentativeness of their truce, their connection, has not yet reached a point of absolute trust. )
[ Unwittingly, the question summons up a slew of unpleasant hypotheticals to assault her senses—the flash of agonizing memory, made worse by the way Luke's saber had resurfaced it. A quad-jumper lifts out of the atmosphere while she tries to yank out of Unkar Plutt's grip. She shouts, wails as a child does. Rey closes her eyes and rubs the heels of her palm up against her forehead, back into her hair, then straightens her neck and lifts her head, leaving her fingers gathered at the base of it.
Her voice fails her for a moment, a croaked breath slipping out on her exhale before she can collect herself, and she lets it get swept up into the natural sounds of the moon, carried away into the basin below. ]
No. [ Carried in the word is a firm stubbornness that squashes any hint of the notion, punishing it by digging it into the ground. It's slow and patient and stern.
If she were going to leave him anywhere, the time was long past. Sometimes, she still thinks she should have left him there on Corellia instead of bringing him back to the Resistance: let the fire consume whatever humanity was left inside of him with the monster he'd made of himself. It's too late for that now. The human pieces of him are pieces of her too, they're little more than a single organism drawing breath in two bodies. The mine proved that. The pain in her leg where there is no injury reaffirms it.
She won't look at him, though. For all that they've been forced into this congress, into accommodating one another by circumstance or the will or the Force or whatever one might call it, she won't turn to look at him with her parents fresh in her mind. He has levied that abandonment against her as a weapon before, left open welts with its lash, and she is sure he would do it again. ] Don't be stupid. It wouldn't do either of us any good to go gallivanting off alone. [ She clears her throat. ] Just go to sleep.
( It is and isn't the reaction that he is expecting. Watching her hands not ghost but drive over her forehead and back over the crown of her skull, he finds himself ill-equipped to deal with the pulse of emotion that coalesces with her answer. Kylo does not dip his hands into the bowl of her thoughts nor does he wade waist-deep into the quagmire of her personal history. He doesn't need to. He's been on that beach and he has smelled that sea air and he has tasted the bitter pill of her dehydrated isolation. He has stood on his own distant planet and watched the tail end of a ship careen away from him in the bright afternoon and felt the tugging pull of a long thread snap and trail off, floating listlessly between stars and planets and the galaxy's bright core, and he has ripped Rey's own perception of what she remembers of her private, inevitable loneliness from her and dissected it enough not to tear into it with teeth and nails now.
What good would it do, anyway?
What good had it done then?
He could leave her, too. Wait until she rouses him from what will amount to nothing, he knows, and somehow pick his way back down the hillside, power up the ship that he would no sooner sell for parts than pilot, leave her on Concorida and try his chances on the Outer Rim, try his hand with the Supreme Leader. It doesn't even exist as a fully formed thought, it's so pointlessly inane. He has hunted her across the galaxy only to become snagged in the tightening grasp of her superior ability. She has brought him here, to this point, and he has seen them over the edge, but even that doesn't feel right, feels like it's assigning too much value on her shoulders when he could have incapacitated her as easily as she had him on Corellia. He could have done any number of things to secure himself the upper hand and see their circumstances mirrored. So what good would it do for either of them, to leave the other behind?
None, Kylo knows that now, as well as he did on Yaga Minor, on Starkiller. A chasm stretches before them now, again, but this time they are huddled on the same side, torn and bleeding but still breathing. What that says, only time will tell, the course of events too far in the future, too unclear, for even Kylo to hazard a guess as to what they might entail. Instead of trying, he lets the limits of his peripheral vision trace the fading lines of her face in the encroaching darkness and says nothing, taking stock of the caliber of her voice and the roughness of it, the jagged sound of her breathing in the moments before her spine sought to steel itself against the onslaught of the storm within her. He doesn't nod, but he does recline, on his elbows, on his back, staring up at the sky overhead as the purple night turns into navy blue turns into black. All the stars come out, an explosion of pinpricks and diamond-white winks unobstructed by city lights, lingering against the backs of his eyelids long after he has attempted to drift off.
Despite Rey's clear instruction, sleep does not come, and Kylo spends some amount of time between deep, meditative breaths, chest and stomach moving as one, before he surrenders to his inability to drift off and sits up again, running a hand over the back of his head where small stones have tried their hardest to carve grooves into his skull. He's quiet a long moment, operating under the guise of scanning the valley below for any signs of movement, before speaking with the carefully controlled timbre of someone who has been practicing disguising and convincing himself that his own fear does not exist. )
What do you suppose will really happen, once we rejoin your comrades?
( In general, yes, but more importantly - to him. )
[ The sheer volume of his thoughts make them impossible to ignore, a din rumbling at the back of her mind as if his were lost in knotted chaos; she only catches glimpses, snippets, half-formed imaginings and dismissals. She decides not to worry about it, not least of all because the Millennium Falcon is not a ship made to be piloted by one. Rey has done it. She doesn't think Kylo could.
She props herself against a tree while he rests—to say he slept would be an inaccurately generous estimation, for she never senses the shift in his breath, the twitch of his limbs, the peace of his ever-tumultuous thoughts. As a result, she never feels truly alone, and it occurs to her then to wonder if she ever will again—she can't imagine that she'll miss the feeling, even if Kylo's companionship isn't one she would have otherwise asked for. But it's peaceful, and it's relatively serene beside the rest of their immediate past, and she settles in to stare down at the mine with a sharp eye out for intruders.
Before she has to watch for too long—a few hours, perhaps—he sits back up, and she turns her face to look at him even before the question comes out. At rest like this, she can feel it coming. ]
I don't know. [ She admits it in a moment of reflection, gaze skewing somewhat away from him to study a tree instead, as if it holds the answers. ] I'm sure General Organa is reassessing our options now, where to take the fleet next to free it from First Order control. [ But that's not what he means. It does, however, buy her time to consider if she has the answer to what he's really looking for, what he really wants to ask. She's never seen how the Resistance handles a prisoner of war—better, she thinks, than the First Order does, which means he has no room for complaint—and she suspects it will be different for his relation to the General. ]
She doesn't want to punish you. [ Rey looks back at him. ] But she can't protect you either.
ugh sorry for slow. i've been working 6 days so by thurs/fri i'm like x__x i see infinity
( For his part, Kylo refrains from looking at her in any capacity, despite the inherent nature of their connection making that a non-issue, despite his propensity to read her growing as it has after spending hours upon hours with her in cramped hyperspace and smaller confines. It isn't for her benefit, he knows, but his own, a distinct unwillingness to allow her to see whatever might be written across his own expression despite the steadiness of his tone. He had known, somehow, that the inevitability of his trajectory would eventually see an equally inevitable end, though the picture of that conclusion has changed in the last year or so, since the destruction of the Hosnian system, since Rey's appearance on the fringes of his awareness, beating like a heart through layers and layers of heavy fabric, since the bridge, since Han Solo.
He had not prepared for it to play out like this, though, huddled together on an outcropping, watching a hole in the rock wall for any signs of life or movement, the thread of his consciousness tangled together with the only person who had ever knocked him down and dared him to get back up, spitting sparks, spitting possibility and vitriol, eventually dragging him to his feet to stand tall if not proud in front of those he had hurt the worst. Kylo snorts derisively, running his thumb across the slash Ji had scored on him and finding that the injury feels better now that the bacta has had ample time to set in, numbness spreading down to his knee following the pattern of his application. )
I find that hard to believe. ( About punishment, not protection. It occurs to him momentarily that his continued survival not just on this detour through hyperspace but within the parameters of Resistance in and of itself rests solely in Rey's hands, now. Whatever she tells them, they will believe her over him - whoever they end up being - but he also knows without having to share any sort of bond with her that the better parts of her nature will speak for themselves should push come to shove. The same dark parts exists within her as the light does within him, and she has brought him this far to give him up to a firing range, just as Organa has longed for this too deeply to see something so final done without a fight, without a compromise. Still - ) She would not be wrong to assign punishment of any caliber. To say that I deserve it would be an understatement.
[ The look she fixes him with bears all the signs and symptoms of surprise, eyes wide, lips pursed and furrowed as though she were trying to mute that reaction, and stillness paralyzing her for a moment too long to be anything else. It's the first time she's heard him suggest that he made a mistake in all of this. The bravado of the dark side seems to crumble and peel at the corners, revealing underneath something tarnished with the weight of its actions.
Or so she thinks.
He's not wrong, of course. She would never disagree on that point—not when he personally saw to the destruction of the Republic, to torturing Poe for information, to killing Han for daring to hope that there was something better in him. He had proven Han wrong, and only Leia's stubbornness had afforded him another chance in the form of Rey; she wasn't wholly convinced he deserved it, only that she could understand him. ]
Because of what you've taken from her, from all of us? [ Rhetorical. She doesn't even afford the question breathing room for what's essentially a confirmation that they share this context. ] Do you regret it?
( If it's the first time that Rey has heard him maybe admit to making a mistake - and he doesn't count being deserving of punishment as an admission of an error, more like an admission of guilt - it is certainly the first time that Kylo has allowed himself to insinuate as much out loud. He had been mostly alone on the bridge that day, heavily distorted by emergency lighting and relatively removed from the other faces and their respective points of view - never mind that Rey's roar had carried almost as far and as easily as the wookiee's - that what he had felt and the way he had reacted to the single most impermissible thing he had done in a string of impermissible things had been a mostly private affair. Snoke had certainly never took it upon himself to suffer the foolish regrets of a dead boy, let alone a dead man walking, and upon returning to Snoke's seat following Starkiller's destruction, Kylo had been far too focused and far too enraged and admittedly far too embarrassed to waste any time feeling sorry for the terrible thing he had done, how it had weakened and rocked him.
That didn't mean that it wasn't still there, though, waiting to creep back in as soon as he allowed his guard to slip, just the slightest.
Does he regret it? )
The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. ( He eventually says after a heavy moment's silence, keeping his voice as tight and neutral as his expression, trained out across the valley below and glancing up only once to the stars overhead. The more time he spends away from the brutality of his training, the wisdom and shadowy guidance of his former master, the less he thinks that he deserves the privilege of regret in the first place. )
[ As much effort as it takes for him to sift through and school the stirring emotions that responded to the question, to come back with passive neutrality despite the conflict warring within, it is harder still for Rey to bite down on her tongue and keep quiet about it. She cannot abdicate herself the sense of entitlement that came with the subject—of everyone he had harmed, Rey was sure, she deserved some further insight, some greater sense of honesty and consideration.
But that path, she knew, was wrong, full of a misguided sense of karmic justice and a victim mentality that relied on what he owed her and not on what action she could take. It was a path of darkness. So though her heart wanted to snap back, she kept her voice gentle, forced herself to find it in her a sense of understanding that this was difficult for him too, what they asked of him, what she had dragged him into—for she had been the one to do it, regardless of whose orders it had been on. ]
Take your time. [ There's a sigh in her voice, one that both strains with reluctance to offer him time and that feels relief now that she doesn't have to work so hard to withstand the pressure of her welling indignation. ]
( His reticence is almost as palpable as her own, regardless of the mentality behind it. Kylo can almost feel her biting her tongue, and were the action not strictly figurative, he probably, quite literally, could, as much as he can sense the distorted location of each and every contusion or sharp point of pain that vibrates through her every time a bone shifts or a muscle bends to accommodate movement. For his part, Kylo keeps preternaturally still, one leg raised in front of him until his knee resembles a tower that he can rest his arm across, the other jutting out in front of him, booted foot listing inelegantly to the left. Concordia is not altogether silent, but it might as well be: a rustling of underbrush here and the sharp call of something in the distance there, every once in a while the mine shaft seeming to breathe a sigh of relieved defeat, loud bangs echoing deep down in the caverns.
He isn't entirely sure whether or not Rey means that he should take his time now, in the moment, or whether he should think on it and get back to her when he has a response that's enough to satisfy her eventually. Every ounce of remorse is tinged with the bitter tang of knowing that at one time he was doing exactly what he felt he needed to do, a mentality that gave him power as well as control, purpose and direction. He can't say that he regrets any of it when an overwhelming majority of it was the direct result of a choice that he made, and regardless of how he feels now, they are still things that he did, in order to prove himself or otherwise. After another series of long moments, he says as much. )
Regret is a tricky concept. You're more than welcome to be sorry for the things that you've done, but that doesn't mean that feeling culpability or remorse undoes them. ( Would he even feel these things had he not been caught, had she not bested him? Kylo likes to operate under the assumption that the world would have gone on spinning the way that it always does, that he and Rey would have continued trading blows until one of them was nothing more than a collection of burn marks, since it's clear to him now that she would never have accepted an offer from him no matter how sweet he made the offer. But he can't be sure. Under the honesty that so often comes with deep, dark nights, he can recognize that the cracks were already starting to show in the veneer long before Han Solo stepped out on that bridge. Kylo just kept covering them up. ) Having regret does not mean that mercy has been earned.
[ The rumination suffices to give her the answers she seeks, even if the words fall short to come up on something decisive and clear and final—she can almost see the hallways he meanders down in his thought process, and what dark pathways they are. His consideration skims him across memories of holding power, exercising it, and feeling righteous in that moment, but it's a metallic tang of righteousness, like it's just off-kilter in some way—enough for Rey to recognize it, at least, but perhaps only because it's been tinted by her mind, or by his sorrow.
The question is a philosophical question: how much of his regret is acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and how much of it is adaptation to a new set of circumstances that demand a different role, a different set of norms to follow in order to reach some sense of success, of righteousness? But then, Rey imagines that he will never feel conviction such as that again—if he is to stay on their side, it will be humility that tethers him to it, characterizes his time spent there, not dominance. ]
So you do feel it. [ Characterizing and qualifying it aside, that's what it boils down to. The rest is just a question of how much that regret is worth to either of them individually. ] You just wish it were more. [ That regret had a greater power than it does—that its force could undo his crimes, that it could rewind time, that it could afford him a sense of control again that he has only ever believed himself to have. In retrospect, the control of the First Order surely must feel lackluster, knowing the insidious ways in which he was only fulfilling the path that Snoke set out, only achieving as far as the Supreme Leader demanded. Surely. Rey wanted to believe that.
But she also knew the inexorable truth of rewinding the clock, taking things back, and reclaiming what was lost. With no small hint of sorrow, she reminds him, ] Nothing has that power.
How much does it take, then, to begin to right some perceived wrong? ( Perceived here meaning inarguable, absolute, undefinable. There is no denying the things that he has done - to her, to Dameron, to Solo and everyone else tangentially linked to him - however much Kylo cloaks them in a hypothetical reality. No amount of philosophizing or hypothesizing will change the course of the river from its source, no branching pathway will reorganize the flow of things to alter the decisions he made in an effort to seize power, to inherit a legacy that was denied him as much as he and everyone else around him denied it, to satisfy the gaping hunger for more and better that permeated his thoughts with the inherent promise of acceptance and understanding and appreciation. He cut so many down on a crash course to making more mistakes than anyone else in his family had ever made, and that's all that it boils down to: mistakes.
Would he take any of it back if he could? There's no point in even asking the question, since he can't. Will it matter if he regrets it in the end, when he's brought before a panel of his mother's associates and equals and put on trial for all the regrets that he has, when he once again finds himself incapable of resisting that pull as he drags Rey down under the surface with him? It's a far cry from what he'd wanted only months ago, when the thought of her listening with rapt attention and completely in sync with him would have curled down his spine with an anticipatory shiver. )
Wishing it were more or less doesn't change anything. Being a little sorry about any of it or being haunted with guilt over all of it, it doesn't matter. As you've said, nothing has that power. ( That isn't precisely what she means, and he knows it, but it seems easier to twist her words around into something to serve his own purposes than it does to let them exist on their own merit. She's right, though, nothing has that power: not him, not Snoke, not Rey, not the legacy that he has beat himself black and blue trying to emulate. ) Would you find it appropriate to forgive me, if I said that I regretted it? ( Another hypothetical, technically, but he poses it all the same. )
[ Lips part to protest his abuse of her words, but any reply fails her, too slow, too quickly swept aside by the way his next question leaves her dumbfounded—not for her response, but rather, dumbfounded for what his intent could be in asking it. It must mean that he wants her to, she concludes, and maybe in doing so, that it will be enough—enough for him to forget Leia and Luke and Han and Poe and Finn and everyone else he hurt because one person forgave him. She doubts that too would have any kind of power.
More to the point, though … ]
No. [ Her answer is simple and offers no hope in the form of uncertainty, resisting his strenuous efforts to twist his words into what he would like to hear. ] There is no forgiveness, for the same reason that there's nothing that can make what you've done okay or take it back. There is only change.
[ A different future, something that won't need forgiving. Rey has seen too many people do too many terrible things in the name of survival and understood intimately their struggles for her to hold onto grudges in a truly obstructive way, but her memory is too long to forget. But just like she'd never expect to navigate the deserts of Jakku based on what it had looked like before the X'us'R'iia came through, she would not make her estimation of Kylo Ren or anyone else based on who they were before—only who they were in that moment.
It seemed like a failed effort, a hopeless task, to articulate as much, so she instead left it at that. Picking herself up off the ground, she trudged closer to the treeline. ]
( It's as much the answer that he's expecting and oddly - or perhaps not - the one that he's hoping for, however much he disagrees that the notion of change is enough to absolve a person of the sins they have committed. He made his choices with or without outside influence, and there is no blame that can be placed anywhere other than upon his own shoulders, no one who can accept responsibility and, subsequently, the anticipated punishment and consequences of what he's done. The stop on Corellia had been just that, a stop, a detour taken until he and Rey loop back around with the inevitability of this path.
Whatever happens on it now, whatever he does or she does in the current course of events, won't change what waits for them, for him, at the end, and that is the satisfaction and validation that he looks for in the negative charge of her response. It's being right for the sake of being right, though he doesn't look for or want any semblance of pity that might normally be attached to something so self-deprecating. Questions they both know the answer to, regardless of the electrical charge that wavers and bends and molds to light and dark around them. Everything turns hypothetical or obvious in the wake of what they have carved out of one another. )
I'll wake you at first light. ( Is his only response, though Kylo knows there's a decent chance Rey will wake herself either before or right at that allotted time, the product of survival and starvation and beating the sun in some capacity. In the meantime, he will keep heavy eyes on the mouth to the mines, skirting between there and the ship and the surrounding hillsides, casting out through the Force for anything that might scuttle around the underbrush like an insect, all the while aware of the severed connection with Snoke, a sore in his mouth that he can't stop tonguing. )
[ The ground felt more familiar to her weary and aching bones than anything she'd slept on in a number of months, firm and cold and unforgiving, and she settled down slowly onto it, her head towards a tree so that she might stare up at its branches, the great dark bough shading her and waving under the wind's breath.
She could not recall how long she lay awake before her breath evened out to betray her sleep, but it could be only minutes, for even her eyes burned from being open, her face tense from remaining alert, her hands sore with the clenching of fists. Unconsciousness did not offer her true rest, plagued by terrors about the condition of the Resistance, the realization of her fears of betrayal, and something else, lurking on the horizon, a latent unease.
The sound of birds and the first beams of light peeking over the horizon did not rouse her, too exhausted yet from the restless few hours that remained of the night. Rather, she turned her face into her arm, shoulder nudged against a protruding root, to instinctively shield her eyes from day's break. ]
( Meditation is a fool's errand, considering all that has happened, and even if he had ever been any good at it unassisted, it's unlikely that he would be able to achieve the needed calm for such a task. Rey's silence, once she does fall into sleep like tumbling down a rough and rocky hill, does nothing to alleviate the strain that weighs not only on his shoulders but in his mind as well, and although it is the first time in days that he has been well and truly alone with his own thoughts - in years - Kylo finds that his mind cannot list toward blank as much as it cannot list toward one concrete thought. He has always lacked focus, and now it is his own fault as much as it isn't that he can't claim one pervasive line of consideration carries more weight or merit than any other.
Ji. Snoke. Aurren. The Force. All of the Resistance and the entirety of the First Order. None of it bears any meaning when it feels like they are the only two people left alive at the end of some line, submerged in silence and struggling through one more night into another day that will likely bring more of the same. Kylo's wounds exist like superficial canker sores that smart and throb when prodded but have no real consequence next to the larger, gaping hole in his mind where the voice of the Supreme Leader once sat as rigidly as he ever had in physical form. Another scar, Kylo supposes, one of many that he is sure to carry with him before this war sees its inevitable end, however muddied that inevitability has become now that Rey has introduced herself as another piece on the board and in a capacity he could not have anticipated.
He is careful not to wander through whatever it is that she dreams of, still entirely too aware of what had transpired in the mines to risk another potential outburst and too tired in his own right to be interested in dealing with another argument with her. Maybe this is how she'll wear him down and drag him home, finally: not through besting him or defeating him but through sheer, stubborn force of will. The lighter it becomes on the horizon, purple velvet changing back to lengthening navy and eventually creamy gold and red - a warning, his father had told him when he was young enough to believe that the weather had any say in fate - the more plausible it seems. It isn't until he feels her come aware that he turns to her, careful to be on his feet before she turns her face to the rising sun. )
[ An undignified noise answers him first, punctuating her unwillingness to acquiesce, and for a moment that follows, she scrunches her face up further where it's buried against her arm. She reluctantly begins to pick herself up a moment later, sloughing off the grip of fatigue like a skin to shed, as if it were so simple when her weariness runs so deep. Rey lifts her gaze towards him, realizes that he looks as though he's been waiting impatiently for an hour or more, and then fumbles onto her feet, dusting herself off haphazardly along the way. ]
You could have woken me.
[ She doesn't claim that it would have done much good, or that she'd have been happy about it, but it feels easier to disavow the responsibility now that day has broken. ]
How's your leg?
[ The fact that the dull throb feels far at the edges of her awareness doesn't tell her much—or at least, she assumes it doesn't, because she attributes it as much to a result of her own sleep-fogged mind as to any reasonable estimation of how the bacta treatment overnight might have prepared him for the progression down. ]
( He could have, but he hadn't, and rather than offer some explanation as to why, Kylo only shrugs, a casual roll of his shoulder that belongs to a man who rises from bent knees with liquid grace too often not to have some innate manner of fluidity to his movement, regardless of how awkwardly assembled he had been as a child. The sky has not yet become the pale streak of blue that might spotlight their movements from above, a clear sky giving way to a clear picture of what it is they intend to do - not that any affordable vantage point would deter anyone seeking them out through lightyears of hyperspace and star systems - and as such, the half-light casts Rey's face in shadow deep enough to make the dirt and darkness crowding her face look like purple-black, marbled bruising. It will take time and better light to determine how much of it is an illusion and how much of it is a result of this fray they have dragged themselves down into. )
Tolerable. ( Is all he offers, immediately, in response to both her question and the matter-of-fact quality of her initial statement. Putting all of his weight on it does not see the collapse or muscle or the breakdown of flesh, but Kylo can't assume that there isn't a tear below skin, when Ji had driven the vibroblade into him as if with the intention to strike bone. But his discomfort is not an island, not when the bond lies coiled and waiting between them like a living, breathing thing ready and waiting to do more than offer vague approximations in the new light of a different day. It surprises him, somewhat, to be able to feel Rey's own injuries as if through a thick layer of fog or as if feeling for the divots between her ribs like searching for something hard through fabric and cotton, but they are still wary of one another, and a full bleed might drag one or the both of them too far underneath the surface. )
I'll live, at any rate. ( To himself, he adds, try not to be too disappointed, but to Rey's face he only sniffs, clears his throat of dust and disuse, his voice deeper and rougher after hours of silence on top of hours - days, weeks, decades - of yelling. ) Your injuries, I assume, are bearable?
[ Her reply came in the form of a nod that was stiff enough to show some reflection on the matter went into it. One hand rested against her ribs as if to prod at the wounds, taking stock and measure, but she dropped it quickly enough to dismiss them. It did her no good to voice her doubts about whether his were really tolerable or not, not when he'd only scowl and argue, and they needed to climb down regardless. If he was indeed exaggerating his health, then he could suffer for it.
With that bit of nastiness estimated, she opened up the leather pouch on her hip and began to root around the cable lines she'd kept in there since she needed them to rappel into a felled AT-AT. The cord was a fibrous sort of metal that allowed for flexibility as well as sturdiness, and she pulled the coil out with some relief. Dirt from Jakku still clung in the joints where the thin fibrous wires bonded, and Rey found herself surprised to feel a sense of wistful nostalgia as her thumb brushed it off. ]
Getting down will be quicker than getting up was, at least. Then we can rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. [ To call it a fleet was generous, but Rey felt they deserved a bit of generosity for the miracle of their mere survival. ] I'm sure General Organa already has a plan for what to do about Hapes.
( By Kylo's estimation, he could be visibly bleeding from the head and Rey's response might ultimately be the same. It might be colored with a little more concern for her own well-being as it now relates to his as a result of this feeble, wavering line that binds them, but he cannot and will not imagine a world in which her solicitude extends to his own health as a separate unity born of some measure of sympathy, never mind the comparatively kind hand that she has shown him since everything went to hell. Or improved, depending on the perspective. As it stands - as Kylo stands, as it were - while the injury to his leg smarts as if teeth had been sunk into it only moments prior, it will endure as well as either one of them will: stubbornly and without pause or reflection that there might be any option otherwise. What other choice do they have, in the end, other than to be fine?
Rey's hand flattens against her side, and he doesn't miss it, nor does he miss the alien pull of pain as if felt from layers of thick wool, pressure through gallons of water, the warmth of skin through a foot of glass. Kylo offers no reaction, no indication that he has noticed, no comment, for once, to contend with the weight of what he knows in direct contrast to what she offers. Which is nothing, though that's hardly a disappointment. Instead, he takes a balanced, measured step toward her, mindful of the distribution of his weight as it relates to the rocky, uneven terrain. )
Delightful. ( He's just as careful to keep any trace of anything from his tone as he is in trekking across the landscape, regardless of whether or not Rey has immediate access to the churning whirl of his anticipation regarding any mention of Organa. One extended meeting has hardly done anything to assuage the argument in his own head he refuses to acknowledge whenever the topic comes up, never mind the consequences of their conversation under the velvety darkness of nightfall only hours before. His neutrality is wasted on the flatness his voice inflects, however. Not even Kylo can pretend to be anything other than absolutely thrilled at the prospect of joining up with the Resistance, the turn of events he and Rey have been following for hours, days, notwithstanding.
He eyes the cable before catching a section of it in his hand, rolling the feel of it between his fingers as if testing for weaknesses. ) How confident are you that it will hold?
( ooc: I just want to drop a more cohesive note and apologize for letting this + everything else dangle. Your last tag actually came the day I was in the ER with my dog who later got diagnosed with lymphoma - the same week my grandmother died lol - so it's been legitimately difficult for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. As a result most nights I am just like I'LL GO TO BED NOW INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHInG, but hopefully as things stabilize I'll be able to find a rhythm. Just in time for school to begin for you again!! So no worries about getting back to this and I hope today I'll be able to get back to our other thread, too! ♥ )
[ They are both foggy enough with fatigue—not just physical, but emotional and mental—from the constant fight and flight for their life that a mental fog entrenches them, dampening pain and distress alike. Certainty in General Organa's preparation is the only levity that she has to hold onto, and she lets it steer her like a beacon to the edge of the cliff, where she peers down to assure herself that the cord will stretch as long as they need it to.
It will. And once she's decided as much, she looks back at Kylo Ren and her expression creeps towards something uncertain. ]
I've used it to haul up probably three hundred pounds of equipment before. The two of us should be no problem. [ Perhaps at the same time, they will strain it, but she prefers that to the possibility of either escape and abandonment—unlikely, given that he would have disappeared in the night had he planned to at all—or ambush by Ji (in a scenario where she had survived the mine) or her followers at the bottom. Rey tipped her head to acknowledge the small window of ineffectiveness in her estimate. ]
It'll hold. [ That's what Han would say. She realizes after she says it, drops her gaze in a momentary remembrance, and turns from Kylo again. ] If you're worried, you can always hold onto the cliff on the way down so you can catch yourself if it snaps.
[ ooc; OH GOODNESS yeah that would wreck anybody's concentration and creativity. :( i'm so sorry! and I hope the wave of badness is over and that you find a good routine to help you find some kind of normal. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i waS COUNTING ON YOU
When finally she hauls herself over the top of the cliff, she doesn't lay flat like she wants to, breath heaving, muscles screaming with the long-coming respite, but instead turns immediately back over the edge to reach for him again, a silent offering of further assistance because she knows if he falls, she won't be proficient enough with the use of the Force in such a way—in the way he excels at most—in order to save him from more than a hundred feet of sheer drop. ]
We were right. Good view of the mine, and I think I can make out the ship too. [ Her words lean more towards optimistic urging than anything braggadocious, born out of the desire to believe it was worth something and that they'll make it up here. ]
WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU HOW DARE YOU
Rey is already speaking by the time he clears the the edge, not bothering to glance behind him to the darkness of the valley below that could have swallowed either one or both of them at any time. She might not have immediately rolled onto her back the moment that she pulled herself over to the topside of the outcropping they now occupy, but Kylo does. Having suspended his illusions of prideful superiority, having convinced himself that there is little point in providing her with the illusory facade of strength and invincibility when she can literally see through him all the way down to the marrow, feel what he feels, taste what he tastes, Kylo pulls himself the rest of the way onto their perch by dragging his right flank across the ground before turning over onto his back and lying prone, like a turtle. )
Yes. Terrific view. ( Stars have started to eek out of the purple-blue-black velvet of the night sky, little pinpricks of bright light winking from light years away. For one contemplative moment, punctured by the rhythm of his breathing, a winded, dragging sound that ends in one long exhale through his nose, Kylo wonders whether or not Snoke is peering at him through the permeating telescopic lens of his own power. It comes and goes as quickly as the wave of his hand toward Rey's back, though the echo of its presence doesn't fade so quickly. ) I'm admittedly not looking forward to the trip back down. ( He raises his head slightly from where it has fallen to the dusty ground to peer at her. ) Sit down before you fall down.
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It prompts her to cast a glimpse inward, assess the energy that stirs within her, or lack thereof, and actually consider how far she can reasonably push herself, consider that she's already well beyond it. Many a time, on Jakku, she pushed herself further still. She can remember passing out from sunstroke, starvation, fatigue, shaking with all of the above until she was all but useless, but incapable do anything else for she was her only way out of it.
The situation is not precisely the same now, but it remains difficult for her to set aside that context when she knows that in this too her life depends on her constant action; more than that, most of the galaxy depends on it. Perhaps not on her individually, but on her efforts to the greater Resistance.
Only Kylo's identification of the problem causes her to slow. She turns to sink into a sitting position, legs bent, and catches her breath with her elbows propped on her kneecaps. A moment passes in silence before she drops her head, shoulders heaving, and finds words. ]
Down will be easier. I've got steel cord; we can rappel. [ She pats the bag on her hip. ] Let's just hope it was for nothing, or we'll have worse than a climb down to deal with.
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For a moment he considers asking her if she has any experience with healing - he certainly doesn't, for reasons that are as obvious as they are insipid - but ultimately resigns himself to bacta and bandages for as long as it takes them to return to the Resistance. A wave of apprehension bordering on nausea threatens to overtake him, and Kylo lets his curled hand fall back to the ground in the vague intimation of slamming a fist into something, the effect somewhat lost with the rapidity of his breathing slowing to something approaching normal. Lying on the ground now affords time and thoughts he has been successfully distracting himself from the opportunity to catch up with him. What will happen when she brings him back to the Resistance? He's too exhausted to rightfully consider anything beyond the inevitable, and it rings with a hollow resignation in his own head, even as he pushes himself to his elbows. )
Are you planning on putting me on your back the way you did on Corellia? ( It's not a real question, as evidenced by his haste to cover it up by pushing himself fully into a sitting position, legs bent at long, bracketed angles out in front of him. Now that he can see the entirety of the valley below, it is actually quite the view, but he hasn't taken stock or consideration of anything that frivolous since long before he left to join Skywalker as a child. ) I get the impression - ( He begins after a quiet moment, pushing his hair out of a damp, sweaty face, and beginning to tug his gloves off. ) - that there won't be a second wave. Aurren Ren may have tailed Ji to this location in an effort to steal some of her perceived glory in being the one to dismantle us, or they may have collaborated in an effort to see the job done. But Ji would be unlikely to share any news of a lead until she could investigate it for herself. She's too determined, and too proud.
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We'll be lucky if that's true. [ Lucky, she says, firmly avoiding the notion of counting on it and knowing that Kylo has already implicitly signed on for the same in climbing up here with her at all. He could have decided at the bottom of the cliff that the chances were slim enough that anyone followed that the vantage point wouldn't do them any good, but he didn't. At least he wasn't so self-destructive as to relinquish the logic of 'better safe than sorry.' ]
I'd still rather take shifts if it's the same with you. [ She turns her attention back towards the mine. She wipes seat from her face and onto the fabric of her shirt, smearing around more of the soot and ash from the mine. Maybe Chewie had found time to refill the water reservoirs on the Falcon before they took off—that'd be a nice surprise to look forward to tomorrow. ] Get some sleep. I'll wake you in a few hours to trade off.
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He says nothing of it, and even were Rey not within arm's reach, he would say nothing of it. He has breathed in ash and smoke and tasted coppery, metallic blood and dirt far too often for it to be of any consequence now, just as he has felt the bite and sting of injury, blaster or otherwise, too often for the pain in his leg to be anything more than routine. For a moment, he thinks to run his fingertips over the extension of the scar that divides his face as if to test the memory of the pain he had felt in prodding it in the days after she had delivered it as it compares to the discomfort that he feels now, but it's a fleeting impulse made less by the command in her tone, however much it stands to ignite the stubborn streak of pride within him that wants to argue with her for the sake of arguing, if nothing else.
Although there is something else. )
You aren't going to climb back down and take the ship, leave me here? ( He intends for there to be hostility in his tone, but either he is more tired than he realizes or is willing to admit or the nature of their relationship has changed further without his awareness of the fact. If anything, he sounds resigned, leaning into the weight of the possibility as if it were an inevitability, even as he knows how ridiculous that it sounds, coming from him, how ridiculous it is to ask her, as someone who has been left behind in the most substantial of ways. The fact remains, though, and the tentativeness of their truce, their connection, has not yet reached a point of absolute trust. )
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Her voice fails her for a moment, a croaked breath slipping out on her exhale before she can collect herself, and she lets it get swept up into the natural sounds of the moon, carried away into the basin below. ]
No. [ Carried in the word is a firm stubbornness that squashes any hint of the notion, punishing it by digging it into the ground. It's slow and patient and stern.
If she were going to leave him anywhere, the time was long past. Sometimes, she still thinks she should have left him there on Corellia instead of bringing him back to the Resistance: let the fire consume whatever humanity was left inside of him with the monster he'd made of himself. It's too late for that now. The human pieces of him are pieces of her too, they're little more than a single organism drawing breath in two bodies. The mine proved that. The pain in her leg where there is no injury reaffirms it.
She won't look at him, though. For all that they've been forced into this congress, into accommodating one another by circumstance or the will or the Force or whatever one might call it, she won't turn to look at him with her parents fresh in her mind. He has levied that abandonment against her as a weapon before, left open welts with its lash, and she is sure he would do it again. ] Don't be stupid. It wouldn't do either of us any good to go gallivanting off alone. [ She clears her throat. ] Just go to sleep.
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What good would it do, anyway?
What good had it done then?
He could leave her, too. Wait until she rouses him from what will amount to nothing, he knows, and somehow pick his way back down the hillside, power up the ship that he would no sooner sell for parts than pilot, leave her on Concorida and try his chances on the Outer Rim, try his hand with the Supreme Leader. It doesn't even exist as a fully formed thought, it's so pointlessly inane. He has hunted her across the galaxy only to become snagged in the tightening grasp of her superior ability. She has brought him here, to this point, and he has seen them over the edge, but even that doesn't feel right, feels like it's assigning too much value on her shoulders when he could have incapacitated her as easily as she had him on Corellia. He could have done any number of things to secure himself the upper hand and see their circumstances mirrored. So what good would it do for either of them, to leave the other behind?
None, Kylo knows that now, as well as he did on Yaga Minor, on Starkiller. A chasm stretches before them now, again, but this time they are huddled on the same side, torn and bleeding but still breathing. What that says, only time will tell, the course of events too far in the future, too unclear, for even Kylo to hazard a guess as to what they might entail. Instead of trying, he lets the limits of his peripheral vision trace the fading lines of her face in the encroaching darkness and says nothing, taking stock of the caliber of her voice and the roughness of it, the jagged sound of her breathing in the moments before her spine sought to steel itself against the onslaught of the storm within her. He doesn't nod, but he does recline, on his elbows, on his back, staring up at the sky overhead as the purple night turns into navy blue turns into black. All the stars come out, an explosion of pinpricks and diamond-white winks unobstructed by city lights, lingering against the backs of his eyelids long after he has attempted to drift off.
Despite Rey's clear instruction, sleep does not come, and Kylo spends some amount of time between deep, meditative breaths, chest and stomach moving as one, before he surrenders to his inability to drift off and sits up again, running a hand over the back of his head where small stones have tried their hardest to carve grooves into his skull. He's quiet a long moment, operating under the guise of scanning the valley below for any signs of movement, before speaking with the carefully controlled timbre of someone who has been practicing disguising and convincing himself that his own fear does not exist. )
What do you suppose will really happen, once we rejoin your comrades?
( In general, yes, but more importantly - to him. )
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She props herself against a tree while he rests—to say he slept would be an inaccurately generous estimation, for she never senses the shift in his breath, the twitch of his limbs, the peace of his ever-tumultuous thoughts. As a result, she never feels truly alone, and it occurs to her then to wonder if she ever will again—she can't imagine that she'll miss the feeling, even if Kylo's companionship isn't one she would have otherwise asked for. But it's peaceful, and it's relatively serene beside the rest of their immediate past, and she settles in to stare down at the mine with a sharp eye out for intruders.
Before she has to watch for too long—a few hours, perhaps—he sits back up, and she turns her face to look at him even before the question comes out. At rest like this, she can feel it coming. ]
I don't know. [ She admits it in a moment of reflection, gaze skewing somewhat away from him to study a tree instead, as if it holds the answers. ] I'm sure General Organa is reassessing our options now, where to take the fleet next to free it from First Order control. [ But that's not what he means. It does, however, buy her time to consider if she has the answer to what he's really looking for, what he really wants to ask. She's never seen how the Resistance handles a prisoner of war—better, she thinks, than the First Order does, which means he has no room for complaint—and she suspects it will be different for his relation to the General. ]
She doesn't want to punish you. [ Rey looks back at him. ] But she can't protect you either.
ugh sorry for slow. i've been working 6 days so by thurs/fri i'm like x__x i see infinity
He had not prepared for it to play out like this, though, huddled together on an outcropping, watching a hole in the rock wall for any signs of life or movement, the thread of his consciousness tangled together with the only person who had ever knocked him down and dared him to get back up, spitting sparks, spitting possibility and vitriol, eventually dragging him to his feet to stand tall if not proud in front of those he had hurt the worst. Kylo snorts derisively, running his thumb across the slash Ji had scored on him and finding that the injury feels better now that the bacta has had ample time to set in, numbness spreading down to his knee following the pattern of his application. )
I find that hard to believe. ( About punishment, not protection. It occurs to him momentarily that his continued survival not just on this detour through hyperspace but within the parameters of Resistance in and of itself rests solely in Rey's hands, now. Whatever she tells them, they will believe her over him - whoever they end up being - but he also knows without having to share any sort of bond with her that the better parts of her nature will speak for themselves should push come to shove. The same dark parts exists within her as the light does within him, and she has brought him this far to give him up to a firing range, just as Organa has longed for this too deeply to see something so final done without a fight, without a compromise. Still - ) She would not be wrong to assign punishment of any caliber. To say that I deserve it would be an understatement.
oh god that sounds horrible make it stop
Or so she thinks.
He's not wrong, of course. She would never disagree on that point—not when he personally saw to the destruction of the Republic, to torturing Poe for information, to killing Han for daring to hope that there was something better in him. He had proven Han wrong, and only Leia's stubbornness had afforded him another chance in the form of Rey; she wasn't wholly convinced he deserved it, only that she could understand him. ]
Because of what you've taken from her, from all of us? [ Rhetorical. She doesn't even afford the question breathing room for what's essentially a confirmation that they share this context. ] Do you regret it?
but money is so nice
That didn't mean that it wasn't still there, though, waiting to creep back in as soon as he allowed his guard to slip, just the slightest.
Does he regret it? )
The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. ( He eventually says after a heavy moment's silence, keeping his voice as tight and neutral as his expression, trained out across the valley below and glancing up only once to the stars overhead. The more time he spends away from the brutality of his training, the wisdom and shadowy guidance of his former master, the less he thinks that he deserves the privilege of regret in the first place. )
damn das true
But that path, she knew, was wrong, full of a misguided sense of karmic justice and a victim mentality that relied on what he owed her and not on what action she could take. It was a path of darkness. So though her heart wanted to snap back, she kept her voice gentle, forced herself to find it in her a sense of understanding that this was difficult for him too, what they asked of him, what she had dragged him into—for she had been the one to do it, regardless of whose orders it had been on. ]
Take your time. [ There's a sigh in her voice, one that both strains with reluctance to offer him time and that feels relief now that she doesn't have to work so hard to withstand the pressure of her welling indignation. ]
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He isn't entirely sure whether or not Rey means that he should take his time now, in the moment, or whether he should think on it and get back to her when he has a response that's enough to satisfy her eventually. Every ounce of remorse is tinged with the bitter tang of knowing that at one time he was doing exactly what he felt he needed to do, a mentality that gave him power as well as control, purpose and direction. He can't say that he regrets any of it when an overwhelming majority of it was the direct result of a choice that he made, and regardless of how he feels now, they are still things that he did, in order to prove himself or otherwise. After another series of long moments, he says as much. )
Regret is a tricky concept. You're more than welcome to be sorry for the things that you've done, but that doesn't mean that feeling culpability or remorse undoes them. ( Would he even feel these things had he not been caught, had she not bested him? Kylo likes to operate under the assumption that the world would have gone on spinning the way that it always does, that he and Rey would have continued trading blows until one of them was nothing more than a collection of burn marks, since it's clear to him now that she would never have accepted an offer from him no matter how sweet he made the offer. But he can't be sure. Under the honesty that so often comes with deep, dark nights, he can recognize that the cracks were already starting to show in the veneer long before Han Solo stepped out on that bridge. Kylo just kept covering them up. ) Having regret does not mean that mercy has been earned.
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The question is a philosophical question: how much of his regret is acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and how much of it is adaptation to a new set of circumstances that demand a different role, a different set of norms to follow in order to reach some sense of success, of righteousness? But then, Rey imagines that he will never feel conviction such as that again—if he is to stay on their side, it will be humility that tethers him to it, characterizes his time spent there, not dominance. ]
So you do feel it. [ Characterizing and qualifying it aside, that's what it boils down to. The rest is just a question of how much that regret is worth to either of them individually. ] You just wish it were more. [ That regret had a greater power than it does—that its force could undo his crimes, that it could rewind time, that it could afford him a sense of control again that he has only ever believed himself to have. In retrospect, the control of the First Order surely must feel lackluster, knowing the insidious ways in which he was only fulfilling the path that Snoke set out, only achieving as far as the Supreme Leader demanded. Surely. Rey wanted to believe that.
But she also knew the inexorable truth of rewinding the clock, taking things back, and reclaiming what was lost. With no small hint of sorrow, she reminds him, ] Nothing has that power.
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Would he take any of it back if he could? There's no point in even asking the question, since he can't. Will it matter if he regrets it in the end, when he's brought before a panel of his mother's associates and equals and put on trial for all the regrets that he has, when he once again finds himself incapable of resisting that pull as he drags Rey down under the surface with him? It's a far cry from what he'd wanted only months ago, when the thought of her listening with rapt attention and completely in sync with him would have curled down his spine with an anticipatory shiver. )
Wishing it were more or less doesn't change anything. Being a little sorry about any of it or being haunted with guilt over all of it, it doesn't matter. As you've said, nothing has that power. ( That isn't precisely what she means, and he knows it, but it seems easier to twist her words around into something to serve his own purposes than it does to let them exist on their own merit. She's right, though, nothing has that power: not him, not Snoke, not Rey, not the legacy that he has beat himself black and blue trying to emulate. ) Would you find it appropriate to forgive me, if I said that I regretted it? ( Another hypothetical, technically, but he poses it all the same. )
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More to the point, though … ]
No. [ Her answer is simple and offers no hope in the form of uncertainty, resisting his strenuous efforts to twist his words into what he would like to hear. ] There is no forgiveness, for the same reason that there's nothing that can make what you've done okay or take it back. There is only change.
[ A different future, something that won't need forgiving. Rey has seen too many people do too many terrible things in the name of survival and understood intimately their struggles for her to hold onto grudges in a truly obstructive way, but her memory is too long to forget. But just like she'd never expect to navigate the deserts of Jakku based on what it had looked like before the X'us'R'iia came through, she would not make her estimation of Kylo Ren or anyone else based on who they were before—only who they were in that moment.
It seemed like a failed effort, a hopeless task, to articulate as much, so she instead left it at that. Picking herself up off the ground, she trudged closer to the treeline. ]
If you're not going to sleep, I will.
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Whatever happens on it now, whatever he does or she does in the current course of events, won't change what waits for them, for him, at the end, and that is the satisfaction and validation that he looks for in the negative charge of her response. It's being right for the sake of being right, though he doesn't look for or want any semblance of pity that might normally be attached to something so self-deprecating. Questions they both know the answer to, regardless of the electrical charge that wavers and bends and molds to light and dark around them. Everything turns hypothetical or obvious in the wake of what they have carved out of one another. )
I'll wake you at first light. ( Is his only response, though Kylo knows there's a decent chance Rey will wake herself either before or right at that allotted time, the product of survival and starvation and beating the sun in some capacity. In the meantime, he will keep heavy eyes on the mouth to the mines, skirting between there and the ship and the surrounding hillsides, casting out through the Force for anything that might scuttle around the underbrush like an insect, all the while aware of the severed connection with Snoke, a sore in his mouth that he can't stop tonguing. )
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She could not recall how long she lay awake before her breath evened out to betray her sleep, but it could be only minutes, for even her eyes burned from being open, her face tense from remaining alert, her hands sore with the clenching of fists. Unconsciousness did not offer her true rest, plagued by terrors about the condition of the Resistance, the realization of her fears of betrayal, and something else, lurking on the horizon, a latent unease.
The sound of birds and the first beams of light peeking over the horizon did not rouse her, too exhausted yet from the restless few hours that remained of the night. Rather, she turned her face into her arm, shoulder nudged against a protruding root, to instinctively shield her eyes from day's break. ]
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Ji. Snoke. Aurren. The Force. All of the Resistance and the entirety of the First Order. None of it bears any meaning when it feels like they are the only two people left alive at the end of some line, submerged in silence and struggling through one more night into another day that will likely bring more of the same. Kylo's wounds exist like superficial canker sores that smart and throb when prodded but have no real consequence next to the larger, gaping hole in his mind where the voice of the Supreme Leader once sat as rigidly as he ever had in physical form. Another scar, Kylo supposes, one of many that he is sure to carry with him before this war sees its inevitable end, however muddied that inevitability has become now that Rey has introduced herself as another piece on the board and in a capacity he could not have anticipated.
He is careful not to wander through whatever it is that she dreams of, still entirely too aware of what had transpired in the mines to risk another potential outburst and too tired in his own right to be interested in dealing with another argument with her. Maybe this is how she'll wear him down and drag him home, finally: not through besting him or defeating him but through sheer, stubborn force of will. The lighter it becomes on the horizon, purple velvet changing back to lengthening navy and eventually creamy gold and red - a warning, his father had told him when he was young enough to believe that the weather had any say in fate - the more plausible it seems. It isn't until he feels her come aware that he turns to her, careful to be on his feet before she turns her face to the rising sun. )
Rise and shine. We're burning daylight.
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You could have woken me.
[ She doesn't claim that it would have done much good, or that she'd have been happy about it, but it feels easier to disavow the responsibility now that day has broken. ]
How's your leg?
[ The fact that the dull throb feels far at the edges of her awareness doesn't tell her much—or at least, she assumes it doesn't, because she attributes it as much to a result of her own sleep-fogged mind as to any reasonable estimation of how the bacta treatment overnight might have prepared him for the progression down. ]
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Tolerable. ( Is all he offers, immediately, in response to both her question and the matter-of-fact quality of her initial statement. Putting all of his weight on it does not see the collapse or muscle or the breakdown of flesh, but Kylo can't assume that there isn't a tear below skin, when Ji had driven the vibroblade into him as if with the intention to strike bone. But his discomfort is not an island, not when the bond lies coiled and waiting between them like a living, breathing thing ready and waiting to do more than offer vague approximations in the new light of a different day. It surprises him, somewhat, to be able to feel Rey's own injuries as if through a thick layer of fog or as if feeling for the divots between her ribs like searching for something hard through fabric and cotton, but they are still wary of one another, and a full bleed might drag one or the both of them too far underneath the surface. )
I'll live, at any rate. ( To himself, he adds, try not to be too disappointed, but to Rey's face he only sniffs, clears his throat of dust and disuse, his voice deeper and rougher after hours of silence on top of hours - days, weeks, decades - of yelling. ) Your injuries, I assume, are bearable?
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With that bit of nastiness estimated, she opened up the leather pouch on her hip and began to root around the cable lines she'd kept in there since she needed them to rappel into a felled AT-AT. The cord was a fibrous sort of metal that allowed for flexibility as well as sturdiness, and she pulled the coil out with some relief. Dirt from Jakku still clung in the joints where the thin fibrous wires bonded, and Rey found herself surprised to feel a sense of wistful nostalgia as her thumb brushed it off. ]
Getting down will be quicker than getting up was, at least. Then we can rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. [ To call it a fleet was generous, but Rey felt they deserved a bit of generosity for the miracle of their mere survival. ] I'm sure General Organa already has a plan for what to do about Hapes.
well a month later i'm the worst rper in the land
Rey's hand flattens against her side, and he doesn't miss it, nor does he miss the alien pull of pain as if felt from layers of thick wool, pressure through gallons of water, the warmth of skin through a foot of glass. Kylo offers no reaction, no indication that he has noticed, no comment, for once, to contend with the weight of what he knows in direct contrast to what she offers. Which is nothing, though that's hardly a disappointment. Instead, he takes a balanced, measured step toward her, mindful of the distribution of his weight as it relates to the rocky, uneven terrain. )
Delightful. ( He's just as careful to keep any trace of anything from his tone as he is in trekking across the landscape, regardless of whether or not Rey has immediate access to the churning whirl of his anticipation regarding any mention of Organa. One extended meeting has hardly done anything to assuage the argument in his own head he refuses to acknowledge whenever the topic comes up, never mind the consequences of their conversation under the velvety darkness of nightfall only hours before. His neutrality is wasted on the flatness his voice inflects, however. Not even Kylo can pretend to be anything other than absolutely thrilled at the prospect of joining up with the Resistance, the turn of events he and Rey have been following for hours, days, notwithstanding.
He eyes the cable before catching a section of it in his hand, rolling the feel of it between his fingers as if testing for weaknesses. ) How confident are you that it will hold?
( ooc: I just want to drop a more cohesive note and apologize for letting this + everything else dangle. Your last tag actually came the day I was in the ER with my dog who later got diagnosed with lymphoma - the same week my grandmother died lol - so it's been legitimately difficult for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. As a result most nights I am just like I'LL GO TO BED NOW INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHInG, but hopefully as things stabilize I'll be able to find a rhythm. Just in time for school to begin for you again!! So no worries about getting back to this and I hope today I'll be able to get back to our other thread, too! ♥ )
that's a weird way to spell best ???
It will. And once she's decided as much, she looks back at Kylo Ren and her expression creeps towards something uncertain. ]
I've used it to haul up probably three hundred pounds of equipment before. The two of us should be no problem. [ Perhaps at the same time, they will strain it, but she prefers that to the possibility of either escape and abandonment—unlikely, given that he would have disappeared in the night had he planned to at all—or ambush by Ji (in a scenario where she had survived the mine) or her followers at the bottom. Rey tipped her head to acknowledge the small window of ineffectiveness in her estimate. ]
It'll hold. [ That's what Han would say. She realizes after she says it, drops her gaze in a momentary remembrance, and turns from Kylo again. ] If you're worried, you can always hold onto the cliff on the way down so you can catch yourself if it snaps.
[ ooc; OH GOODNESS yeah that would wreck anybody's concentration and creativity. :( i'm so sorry! and I hope the wave of badness is over and that you find a good routine to help you find some kind of normal. ]
you are legitimately too kind
routine is suuuuuper good for mindset i'm both fatigued by school and glad it's back
now i'm back. from outer space. i just walked in here to find you with that look upon your face!
now that you're back in the atmospheeere drops of jupiter in your haiiir mixes pop lyrics nbd
this is fine it's just the remix duh
club mix ntz ntz ntz
hahah this semester is killing me. i'm sorry if this tag is garbage. december can't come fast enough
honestly sets all of 2016 on fire is it over yet