( He at least has the dignity not to stumble - or, rather, the pride not to let the impact's jar against the damage done to his leg do anything more than seeing the momentary disruption of his balance. He still holds onto the cable, though it's less a matter of functionality or hoisting himself up into a standing position and more a matter of doing something with his hands, and only lets go of it in order to stalk off once Rey turns on her heel and begins leading them away from the cliff's edge, skulking behind her for a moment like a cat who's just had a bucket of paint dumped over its head. The weight of the last few days certainly presses down on his back and shoulders as though that were a reality, and for as much as he might be able to blame it on the physical exertion and toll that it's had - not solely on him, but on the both of them, a constant, endless feedback loop threaded over and over and over until distinguishing lines blur and the edges fade away - Kylo knows that it's more than that.
The Supreme Leader is out there, somewhere, the other remaining Knights are out there, Organa is out there. Requisite detours and the kinds of potential setbacks that Rey describes, as the length of his stride catches up to her enough that he has to slow in order not to pass her, are only delaying the inevitable: not necessarily a waiting punishment or conviction, but a choice. He'd made one here on this moon, when he'd turned against former allies in a bid to not only protect himself but the girl walking next to him, but it had been a separate continent from the decisions that he knows are waiting for him, for the both of them, when they rejoin the hobbled-together Resistance fleet.
Rey's feelings of superiority, that smug satisfaction that had manifested in the moments before she'd set off, are replaced by something more tuned to the nature of their circumstances the closer that they come to where they'd touched down the day before. Feelings that are reflected and reciprocated in himself, despite the pounding of his subconscious telling him to disregard it. He grunts. )
I suppose you'll have to take your chances, won't you. Trust that your word means as much as you want to believe that it does. ( The comments are meant to be biting, a critical review of her place among the ranks of other Resistance fighters. Instead, it sounds more resigned, and Kylo chances a sideways glance at her face, swallowing before gesturing back toward the direction of the ship. ) There's no way of knowing until we know.
( What they might do should her doubts end up confirmed, he has no idea. He'd think of something. )
[ And certainly, she did hope. More ardently than she would have before they'd touched down on this rock, to her surprise, for as much as she loathed the connection between them and the pain it had caused her in the tunnels, resented him for how entwined their fates had become, she also understood what had taken place here.
It was not the same as turning his back on Snoke to free himself. Untethering himself was a different endeavor, one that she felt was independent of his role in the Resistance, in her life, in Luke's, regardless of her attestations to Leia in his defense. He wanted freedom, and they had given it to him. But here, he reiterated his disloyalty, not to protect only himself, but her as well.
Or maybe she's just grown resigned as he has, accepting that his fate and hers are written together now and making more palatable the notion that they might both be lepers of their respective causes, left to make their own place in this war. ]
Bright side. [ She pushed a cluster of bushes out of the way to open up a clear view of the Falcon. She felt better just seeing it. ] If we're unwelcome in their ranks, you won't be imprisoned anymore. Just on the run. [ She was trying her best, as she always did, to make the most of a shitty situation. By coincidence, this entailed roping him into the same rough optimism. Glancing back at him again, she furrowed her brow. ] Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure if that's better or worse.
[ It was a cold day in hell, surely, for Rey to want a break from flying, but her arms tensed up in anticipation of the requisite levering motions. The cramped cabin space she still found comforting, the sight of the Falcon that she considered her roving home, and the promise of a new horizon line to stare out at. Unfamiliar. No sand. ]
hahah this semester is killing me. i'm sorry if this tag is garbage. december can't come fast enough
( If Rey felt better by simply looking at the scrap of bolts and poorly soldered wires waiting for them underneath the canopy of decent camouflage, Kylo, certainly, felt worse. Adding insult to injury, given the dull throb currently traveling the length of his leg. Dull like the edge of a blade still sharp enough to cut but not without enough force exerted to break the skin to the muscle and bone beneath, like gnawing hunger displaced after too long spent without some sort of compensation, discarded as a necessity rather than a convenience. Too much had attached itself to that ship for boarding it again to be of no consequence, and although he had, by that point, spent enough time on board to diminish many of the ghosts lingering within, the prospect of doing it all over again still left a sour taste in his mouth.
Or maybe that was just hunger tinged with the reality that Rey was proposing, for however misguided it seemed. All at once, it felt like they were back on opposing sides, lines of cooperation diminished not as a result of their mutual compliance but as a reminder of the world they lived in, where they had come from and where they were expected to go. Ripped apart but still connected, a vast, great length of spun wire spanning the galaxy between them. )
You can't honestly believe that the Resistance will let me go. ( His voice, despite his effort to be contrary, to be vindictive, to be arrogant, wavered somewhere in the middle, regaining traction enough to offer a smooth conclusion, even though the thread that it hung by was threatening to snap. Two Knights dead - maybe; how could they be sure about Ji? - would be enough to seal his fate with the Supreme Leader even without the effect that the bond had on him, without what he'd done as Rey had guided him through layers and layers of subconsciousness. Without Rey, and whatever compassion he'd been accused before of having for her, what that meant in conjunction with the tumultuous fall his father had taken over the side of that bridge. What he wanted, put more simply, although if prompted Kylo still wasn't sure that he would have a complete answer.
None of which answered the question on the Resistance's side, whether or not his actions would be enough to construe him as anything other than a war criminal to be put down or imprisoned. Rey's view held enough optimism - and not just for him, but for the both of them - to set his teeth against one another in a sharp grind, but Kylo instead only bit the inside of his cheek, quelling the burn of his doubt somewhat. ) They aren't going to let me waltz out to fade into obscurity, just as they aren't going to cast you out because you think you might be more trouble than you're worth. Especially if they think that I've betrayed them - betrayed you. Organa wouldn't stand for it, and neither would any of those people that you've determined merit enough of your attention to call them friends. ( Despite the level determination to get him to see otherwise, he refused to relent to something that might only momentarily assuage the lingering fear and trepidation, and chose instead to linger in the comfort of his own attached perception of reality. The First Order would certainly not relent, and the Resistance would be stupid to do so as a matter of principle.
Waiting for the ramp to descend and allow them entry, Kylo turned halfway to her. ) I think it would be worse.
( Drifting aimlessly, no purpose, no goal, nothing to strive toward, nothing to snuff out. Just another face in a crowd. )
[ The smooth voice he used to goad her with his fate seemed to assert that he valued spite and proving her wrong more than his own life—perhaps, though, it really just meant he saw little value to his life anymore in the first place. It didn't take much, then, to value anything above it. The glance she cast his way worried over him, absently, more out of uncertainty for what his callous irreverence could mean for her than anything sentimental. For better or worse, the Force intertwined their fates, fibers weaving some great tapestry. She could not imagine what image it would reveal, not yet, but every missed stitch gave her cause for panic. ]
Does that make you an optimist, thinking they'll have us back? [ She offered it aloud for no reason other than the amusement it gave her to think of how that jarred against her contrary observations of him. The thought crinkled her nose, but her expression remained too grim to even entertain the notion of a smile, and when the ramp finished its hydraulic glide to the ground, she did not waste a minute before hiking up into the cabin.
Being linked to him as she was forced her into an uneasy dissonance climbing that ramp; to Rey, it represented the closest thing to a home she'd known off that spit of desert in Jakku that she'd tethered herself too for a decade too long, but to Kylo Ren, it was a prison of unpleasant memories. It made her stomach turn, and she shucked his emotions off stubbornly to try and alleviate the discomfort it posed.
Even when she was sure the emotions clouding her mind were only her own, though, she felt the acute certainty of his preference: prison, indeed. The isolation of floating through space as a nobody was immeasurable. She'd felt it herself, the loneliness it brought, hated her environment but felt trapped in it, as anyone seeking a life of obscurity might. Power had fostered in her a pride which had likened her as much as anything else to the one-time enemy that accompanied her now as her only ally. ] We'll need to keep communication channels open and pop out of hyperspace to try and pick it up. If I had to guess, they'd at least have D'Qar broadcasting. We can start there.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
this is fine it's just the remix duh
The Supreme Leader is out there, somewhere, the other remaining Knights are out there, Organa is out there. Requisite detours and the kinds of potential setbacks that Rey describes, as the length of his stride catches up to her enough that he has to slow in order not to pass her, are only delaying the inevitable: not necessarily a waiting punishment or conviction, but a choice. He'd made one here on this moon, when he'd turned against former allies in a bid to not only protect himself but the girl walking next to him, but it had been a separate continent from the decisions that he knows are waiting for him, for the both of them, when they rejoin the hobbled-together Resistance fleet.
Rey's feelings of superiority, that smug satisfaction that had manifested in the moments before she'd set off, are replaced by something more tuned to the nature of their circumstances the closer that they come to where they'd touched down the day before. Feelings that are reflected and reciprocated in himself, despite the pounding of his subconscious telling him to disregard it. He grunts. )
I suppose you'll have to take your chances, won't you. Trust that your word means as much as you want to believe that it does. ( The comments are meant to be biting, a critical review of her place among the ranks of other Resistance fighters. Instead, it sounds more resigned, and Kylo chances a sideways glance at her face, swallowing before gesturing back toward the direction of the ship. ) There's no way of knowing until we know.
( What they might do should her doubts end up confirmed, he has no idea. He'd think of something. )
club mix ntz ntz ntz
It was not the same as turning his back on Snoke to free himself. Untethering himself was a different endeavor, one that she felt was independent of his role in the Resistance, in her life, in Luke's, regardless of her attestations to Leia in his defense. He wanted freedom, and they had given it to him. But here, he reiterated his disloyalty, not to protect only himself, but her as well.
Or maybe she's just grown resigned as he has, accepting that his fate and hers are written together now and making more palatable the notion that they might both be lepers of their respective causes, left to make their own place in this war. ]
Bright side. [ She pushed a cluster of bushes out of the way to open up a clear view of the Falcon. She felt better just seeing it. ] If we're unwelcome in their ranks, you won't be imprisoned anymore. Just on the run. [ She was trying her best, as she always did, to make the most of a shitty situation. By coincidence, this entailed roping him into the same rough optimism. Glancing back at him again, she furrowed her brow. ] Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure if that's better or worse.
[ It was a cold day in hell, surely, for Rey to want a break from flying, but her arms tensed up in anticipation of the requisite levering motions. The cramped cabin space she still found comforting, the sight of the Falcon that she considered her roving home, and the promise of a new horizon line to stare out at. Unfamiliar. No sand. ]
hahah this semester is killing me. i'm sorry if this tag is garbage. december can't come fast enough
Or maybe that was just hunger tinged with the reality that Rey was proposing, for however misguided it seemed. All at once, it felt like they were back on opposing sides, lines of cooperation diminished not as a result of their mutual compliance but as a reminder of the world they lived in, where they had come from and where they were expected to go. Ripped apart but still connected, a vast, great length of spun wire spanning the galaxy between them. )
You can't honestly believe that the Resistance will let me go. ( His voice, despite his effort to be contrary, to be vindictive, to be arrogant, wavered somewhere in the middle, regaining traction enough to offer a smooth conclusion, even though the thread that it hung by was threatening to snap. Two Knights dead - maybe; how could they be sure about Ji? - would be enough to seal his fate with the Supreme Leader even without the effect that the bond had on him, without what he'd done as Rey had guided him through layers and layers of subconsciousness. Without Rey, and whatever compassion he'd been accused before of having for her, what that meant in conjunction with the tumultuous fall his father had taken over the side of that bridge. What he wanted, put more simply, although if prompted Kylo still wasn't sure that he would have a complete answer.
None of which answered the question on the Resistance's side, whether or not his actions would be enough to construe him as anything other than a war criminal to be put down or imprisoned. Rey's view held enough optimism - and not just for him, but for the both of them - to set his teeth against one another in a sharp grind, but Kylo instead only bit the inside of his cheek, quelling the burn of his doubt somewhat. ) They aren't going to let me waltz out to fade into obscurity, just as they aren't going to cast you out because you think you might be more trouble than you're worth. Especially if they think that I've betrayed them - betrayed you. Organa wouldn't stand for it, and neither would any of those people that you've determined merit enough of your attention to call them friends. ( Despite the level determination to get him to see otherwise, he refused to relent to something that might only momentarily assuage the lingering fear and trepidation, and chose instead to linger in the comfort of his own attached perception of reality. The First Order would certainly not relent, and the Resistance would be stupid to do so as a matter of principle.
Waiting for the ramp to descend and allow them entry, Kylo turned halfway to her. ) I think it would be worse.
( Drifting aimlessly, no purpose, no goal, nothing to strive toward, nothing to snuff out. Just another face in a crowd. )
honestly sets all of 2016 on fire is it over yet
Does that make you an optimist, thinking they'll have us back? [ She offered it aloud for no reason other than the amusement it gave her to think of how that jarred against her contrary observations of him. The thought crinkled her nose, but her expression remained too grim to even entertain the notion of a smile, and when the ramp finished its hydraulic glide to the ground, she did not waste a minute before hiking up into the cabin.
Being linked to him as she was forced her into an uneasy dissonance climbing that ramp; to Rey, it represented the closest thing to a home she'd known off that spit of desert in Jakku that she'd tethered herself too for a decade too long, but to Kylo Ren, it was a prison of unpleasant memories. It made her stomach turn, and she shucked his emotions off stubbornly to try and alleviate the discomfort it posed.
Even when she was sure the emotions clouding her mind were only her own, though, she felt the acute certainty of his preference: prison, indeed. The isolation of floating through space as a nobody was immeasurable. She'd felt it herself, the loneliness it brought, hated her environment but felt trapped in it, as anyone seeking a life of obscurity might. Power had fostered in her a pride which had likened her as much as anything else to the one-time enemy that accompanied her now as her only ally. ] We'll need to keep communication channels open and pop out of hyperspace to try and pick it up. If I had to guess, they'd at least have D'Qar broadcasting. We can start there.