apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

open post.
▬ action
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( It is hardly the worst thing that he has ever done, voluntarily or inadvertently. He doesn't possess the dexterity that Rey does in separating one string of events from the other as they have transpired to bring them to this hollow, practically inadequate ditch that will have to serve as a grave, however much Kylo does not intend to mark it. The Knights themselves are meant to function as a unit, an extended arm, rather than individual faces and identities, regardless of how much they may be carved out as intrinsic parts of the individuals who labor behind the masks that they all wear. Ren is a title, a privilege, a fact that even Kylo recognizes as the head of the organization that spreads beneath him like a splayed hand.

He would expect no such distinction were he to fall, but he never has, never to them, at any rate, and he isn't sure whether or not he should find it strange or fitting that the only person to ever see him flat on his back currently occupies the same space, physically and otherwise, as him, as if the reward for her ability, her determination, is the black plume of his presence inviting discord like a lightning rod. The time for adequate consideration of such a phenomenon is long past, wrapped up in the blanket of his own weariness, more pervasive than he could have expected, and Kylo does wonder how much of it is his own and how much of it is a mutual exasperation shared by the both of them, as Rey lifts the door and deposits what's left of the burnt up Knight into the hole they have dug between them.

Filling in the pit takes less time than digging it had, though toward the end of it, he throws what's left of the dirt into the hole with a push through the Force, eager to see the task done and their trek continued in the interest of closing his eyes. )

I don't know much of wildlife here - ( He begins after a moment spent staring at the lump that denotes the location of the body, and rather than an appropriate burial spot, Kylo regards it as more of a landmark back to the location of the ship than anything sentimental. ) - but I can't anything digging deep enough to reach down that far. It should serve adequately as a grave.

[ For an inscrutable moment, Rey stares blankly at him, processing his words only to get hung up on them; his acknowledgment makes it apparent, implicitly, that this is an exception for him, being unfamiliar with the ecosystem of the Mandalore system. Rey had considered it a given that they were both stumbling altogether blindly through this unfamiliar terrain, but she realizes then that unfamiliar has a different meaning for her than it does for Kylo, who has seen enough of the universe to participate in its conquering while she crawled around in the dirt on Jakku. All she knows is deserts and the ache of starvation. What he knows of the galaxy outnumbers what he doesn't.

A dumb nod comes too late, and she abandons the hovel in favor of marching in the direction of the cliff that she had identified. The further they hike into its shadow, the more apparent the truth of Kylo's assessment becomes: towering from afar, it is steeper when they are close enough to see the details, and shielded by small, loose stones on its face to dissuade those who would scale it. A rough climb indeed for an uninjured party, worse for them. ]

Have you ever been here before? [ She asks while they circle the craggy rock face, finding larger and sturdier rocks to the northern edge. ] The system, I mean. Not Concordia specifically.

[ It's an unabashed effort to fill the silence; she does not much care about whether or not he's been to Mandalore before, but she would rather ask about that than expound on her uncertainties about what they're going to face, or offer him the chance to opt out of scaling the cliff in what would be an obvious bid to get out of it herself. ]

( Starting up again proves more difficult than he would have anticipated, the growing pain in his thigh reduced to a pinprick of constant throbbing that sees itself weighted down under the pressure of his own stubborn persistence. There is no room or opportunity available to allow himself a momentary lapse into weakness, and the relenting of his own propensity to grapple with injury would mean dropping the floodgates holding back the tide of Rey's mutual presence within his mind. Whether his pain would impact her in a way that might be debilitating were he to allow it to wrap around the both of them and squeeze is not within his frame of knowledge, not when the bond itself in this sort of heightened state is still so new and its territory still so unwalked, but it isn't a risk that he's willing to take when they need to be as aware of things as they possibly can be, never knowing what waits for them beyond the purpling horizon ushering in nightfall.

Over his shoulder, Kylo throws a glance back down at the way they had come, unable to see the layout of the mine and the buildings around it for the trees but knowing, ultimately, what lies smoldering and crumbled in the distance. It is Rey's question only that diverts his attention from wondering whether or not Ji had actually fallen underneath the rubble they - he - had brought down around them or if she is merely cloaked again, swaddled under a protective layer of darkness while she licks her wounds and stokes the fire higher. Before answering Rey, Kylo glances down at his feet to ensure that his steps are secure enough to continue onward and upward, mindful of the loose gravel that slants sideways and backwards, rolling as they make their way to a proper vantage point. )

Twice, to a degree. ( His explanation is not forthcoming, and he frowns at the space between Rey's shoulder blades where she can't see it, debating on what information to provide and how much of it. It takes only a quick, private reminder that there exist very few secrets between them now to cinch the decision to continue. ) Once, two or three years ago, on a personal errand before I was assigned a post on the Finalizer. Prior to that - ( He pauses, a memory that is not actually a memory but rather a recycled version of a memory based on second hand information alone, given to him as a child who had been curious about planets and systems and trade routes and the stars in general, grasping for bigger and better things than the tactile offerings of toys and hands to hold. ) - I was far too young to remember, though I've been told I enjoyed the food.

( Another long pause follows this admission, though what it admits is uncertain, given the vague nature of it, and he considers the length of her back, the width of her shoulders and the slouch, the slump, not defeated but worn down, an echo of what he knows he feels himself. The suggestion that they stop lives and dies in the back of his throat but he refuses to suggest it, not yet. Instead, he attempts what he rarely has before: small talk. However bitterly tinted with their past altercations it has to be in and of itself. )

Jakku is a long way off now. Yaga Minor, Corellia. Hapes and Concordia. What other systems have you added to your list since Starkiller Base?

[ It might be the first time he has willingly divulged some information of his childhood—and from his conspicuous silence and discomfort, she guesses it to be one of the few decent memories he retains of it, which perhaps strikes particularly dissonant against the backdrop of his betrayal and murder of the other Knights of Ren. He has come a long way since his first visit to this system, and perhaps begun to turn back on that path.

She does not press her luck in it, well aware of how naked it leaves him.

Talking about herself is easier by contrast, for it means focusing on the part of her life that has changed for the better since encountering BB-8 and Finn on Jakku. Anything reflective that involves more than sand and waiting strikes her as pleasant, even if it means sharing that with someone whom she would rather drown in a sandpit. ]

Ahch-To. That's where the map led. Perhaps sometime you'll go to see it as well. [ For the most part, his defection must feel like doors closed and bridges burned, facd by a wall of disapproval and unease, but Rey makes no presentation in how she offers him the chance to consider the opportunities that are produced. ] Kashyyyk, once.

Hapes was my first time beyond the Mid-Rim.

[ Out of view, in the dark of the forest with her back to him, she scrunches her nose at the thought, realizing that for as broad as her horizons have become, they are still limited by the conflict in the galaxy. The Resistance cannot show her Telos or Centares or Naboo or Coruscant, for they are a long way from such a significant victory to uproot such core pieces of First Order real estate—Imperial real estate, dressed up in new clothes. ]

( A direct line leading away from the path that smaller, incorporeal and more foolish feet once walked is a line he will gladly take, even in the event that it leads him to the brick wall of her admission. Kylo's steps falter somewhat, only insofar as they cease to continue for a moment, allowing some small amount of distance to separate them as Rey continues walking and he allows himself to breathe in both the luxury of oxygen, rife with dust sent up by the flurry of their footsteps but tasting clearer than it has since before the mines, and the gravity of her statement.

Ahch-To, admittedly, is a planet that he has never heard of, a planet that he by all rights should not be able to conceptualize and yet it blooms like a garden in the forefront of his mind, widening before eyes that take in only the slope of Rey's shoulders and back, the color of her hair and the strength of her legs as they climb ever onward. Instead of rocks and the rough side of a slanted hillside, trees around and behind them, he sees that island not necessarily as he remembers it from the confines of Rey's private thoughts but as a manifestation of her own recollection, and within that framework exists those mossy steps he had stumbled on while in the tandem connection of their momentary foray into one another's thoughts on Yaga Minor: damp air tinged with salt in the back of his throat, gray skies overhead while green and crumbling staircases spiral away down below.

It lasts only a moment, and then he is picking up the pace again, following her with the same diligence that he had followed her through the night-blasted sands of Jakku, of the ice fields and deep green forests that had come after. He frowns. )

I have little doubt that your affiliation with the Resistance will see you further than a planet full of mistrustful, pretty faces and walking carpets. ( To say nothing of where their path might take them now, with how far off course they seem to have spun in an effort to rid themselves of his personal ghosts. ) I've never even heard of Ahch-To, if you can believe it. You hid it well enough.

I had to.

[ The answer is simpler than the task by far; learning to shut him out was the first necessity of her training, clearing her mind and controlling the flow of information. She'd figured it out faster than he had—but then, there was every possibility that Snoke didn't want to train him in that and run the risk of Kylo shutting him out as well—the Resistance was able to do less with the information she'd gleaned from Kylo based on sheer numbers alone than the First Order could have done with what she was hiding. It was worth the risk, maybe.

But the result of that imbalance from the start has been its persistence: she has seen far more of his mind now, despite the circumstances of their bond's creation on Starkiller, than he has of hers. She prefers it that way, all truths told, for it gives her some measure of leverage and of distance, both of which she needs in order to be able to manage the responsibility and weight of this mantle she has taken up out of necessity, out of perceived debt to Leia Organa.

Her movements are ceaseless, practiced enough to look tireless and simple, and she picks through trees as the ground becomes steadily rockier closer to the cliff. She steps up close to the cliff, hoists herself up, and makes an effort at the first few feet of the climb. From six feet up, without gazing down at him, she affords the conversation further attention again. ]

That's a broad brush to paint the Hapans with. They were kind enough. [ To her, without knowing her for a Jedi. She doesn't think too hard on it, content to allow her experience to make an effort at disproving Kylo's prejudices. ] What makes you think so poorly of them? [ Her thoughts, though, are on Leia, Luke, Finn, and Chewie, wondering what became of the situation there, wondering if they were all right. She finds herself reaching out, casting a net up into the stars as if to reach for them. ]

( He would have expected nothing less from her than absolute resistance, despite his own curiosities and inclinations toward potential exposure as he rooted around the confines of their bond from his own side like testing the boundaries and limitations of a bruise. A gradual prod at the outskirts before brushing fingertips fully over the ring of blue-purple and yellowing outliers, testing the give of the skin and where the pain was the greatest, how much pressure it could take before snapping some vessel, some threshold beneath. The differences stacked between them topple the similarities, no matter how eager he is to draw them down to smaller numbers, reduce them in favor of - what, exactly? As Kylo follows her on their journey out of the shadow of the trees and into outcropping of rock an stone, just as he has since he followed her down, down, down on Corellia, through mud and rainwater and the internal circulatory system of the Falcon's shoddy wiring, the motive has become less and less clear. Just as his reasons for hiding his connection tracing back to her from Leader Snoke had been unclear to start with, although those motivations became more solid over time, whereas his involvement now seems more about momentum than it does about direction.

Rey, as always, moves ever upward, hoisting herself with little fanfare or perceived difficulty, leaving Kylo searching for an alternate path below. Having the advantage of a longer reach and more strength physically - though she would probably argue that to be debatable; he might let her - but the hindrance of a bum leg should prove a challenge in and of itself, but he grits his teeth against the discomfort in the end and takes the task for what it is: a necessity, a point to push beyond and emerge stronger for it on the other side. Her question, though, catches him somewhat off-guard, and he looks up at her before continuing with a pointed, perplexed look. )

They were kind to you because you're a woman and an attractive one, at that. ( Were he capable of addressing it like he were doing anything other than assessing the specs of a battle cruiser or the atmospheric conditions of some planet, such a comment could be considered a compliment, but his tone remains devoid of context as a precaution as much as it does objectivity. The tension between them is as thick as oil as it stands; regardless of what he thinks about her, letting something like that creep between them when they need to rely on one another in some capacity isn't something he's interested in catering to. Maybe later, on the other side of all of this, though Kylo can't and won't and doesn't want to imagine a world in which Rey is at all receptive to the notion that he finds her something more than tolerable in terms of appearance, and after a moment, his bemused expression turns back into his normal frown. He starts climbing up after her in the following gap his natural pause provides. ) That's why I suggested you talk to them over me. I can't imagine it would have gone over well had such an odd-looking man with a facial scar attempted to negotiate with the Queen Mother. ( To say nothing of his overall disposition and opinion on negotiations. Most of his tactics are more aggressive than discourse, and the addition of their lightsabers would not have gone over alarmingly well. )

More to the point, they forced our hand in retreat. Their suspicion scattered your forces, including the General and your master, and drove us here, directly into this mess. Why wouldn't I think poorly of them?

[ The fact that he has complimented her doesn't appropriately process until long after he's finished his entire scowling tirade against the Hapans—well after, in fact, because he distracts her with the unpleasant truth of the scattered Resistance. Any power they had gained, any progress made, any shift in their standing in this war was in jeopardy, a question unanswered in their current position, and though she could use her senses to reach out and try to manifest some answer to placate her worry, it was not the same as actual understanding of the specifics in such a situation. Alive did not mean well, not anymore.

Rey, then, begrudgingly must give merit to the curmudgeon climbing below her and his bias, permitting him his loathing and even harboring simmering sour sentiments. It is pedantry now to point out that he was unkind towards the Hapans well before they had turned the Resistance away. ]

I didn't realize you thought so poorly of enemies of the Resistance. [ And then, finally, after the words have left her mouth, an unspoken follow up as a lock clicking into place, wondering at the fact that he thought so consistently highly of her. Few have, and Rey herself regularly feels like she's merely scrambling to get by in all of this, but Kylo has another perspective on the matter, often revealing a high estimation of her capability and (apparently) her good looks.

She can't decide how she feels about it, so she leaves it behind in the dust of her climb, a few tiny rocks crumbling away from the wall as she disrupts them while grabbing onto larger ones. The higher they go, the more trees intermittently break up the rocky precipice, jutting out between stones in gnarled loops as they stretch ever upward. Rey seizes onto one of them, loops her arm around, and turns to reach down for him, an open hand offered out in acknowledgment of his struggle and her experience. Greater height for her might mean leaving the complications of her thoughts behind, but for him, it's likely to mean the pain in his leg growing and straining. ]

General Hux is an enemy of the Resistance, and I think pretty poorly of him. ( He points this out just as Rey is having her epiphany, determining for himself how he is going to navigate the change in terrain without slipping back inside of himself, without hollowing out that bitter center within him to tap into the deep, dark well that might propel him forward. Even drawing strength from the marrow of his bones, his nerve endings and endorphins, in such a way has its limitations, and he has no desire to be utterly wiped out in mind and body and ability, not to mention the wedge that drawing too much on himself in that fashion might continue to drive between himself and the young woman accompanying him. ) I prefer to think of it as -

( He looks up at the last moment, cutting his sentence short with a slight lessening of the perpetual scowl that has root itself so firmly into place, to see the hand that she extends toward him. It doesn't surprise him to be presented with it, necessarily, given the way that they have leaned on one another more than once, but seeing her hand thrown out toward him without the bright glare of a saber at the end of it or some other jumble of tension and aggression ready to strike is still jarring in its own right. Kylo's eyes skip from her outstretched fingers up to her face as he takes the proffered grip and gets his bearings and balance underneath him before following her, leaning on her in this way, and refusing to acknowledge to himself the alleviation that it provides the pain in his leg.

There's little opportunity for conversation as they continue upward, a result of both focusing on where hands and feet should go and biting down on the bitter than of his own discomfort. Kylo knows that Rey can perceive it as well as he can her various aches and pains but for the most part their focus is on seeing this through to the bitter end, however inconvenient and tiresome it is. It's hardly the first time that either of them have pushed themselves beyond the limit of practicality, though there is a raw raggedness to Rey's determination and movement that belies more of her experience with perseverance as a necessity rather than a means to an end or a matter of pride. He watches every move that she makes with careful deliberateness and begins to understand, the more she pushes herself, why and how she was able to overcome him so long ago. )

[ 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.

( 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. )

HOORAY YOU MADE IT. you better sleep in until like noon every single day

8( two weeks of summer work + rey cosplay to make tho. BUT SOON. SO SOON.

summer work get outta here but that rey cosplay is gonna be amazing i am 100% sure. THEN SLEEP

SO MUCH SLEEP i conned a bunch of people into helping me with the cosplay so i have a prayer

ALL THE SLEEP hahahaha i am so proud of your conning abilities

it's been like 3 solid days of work + cosplay i'm actually dying. tomorrow too, then con

please don't die i will have to do some black magic to bring you back and i am just not prepared

omg i thought you were studying wtf

i was but i ran out of sacrificial lambs

i waS COUNTING ON YOU

WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU HOW DARE YOU

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ugh sorry for slow. i've been working 6 days so by thurs/fri i'm like x__x i see infinity

oh god that sounds horrible make it stop

but money is so nice

damn das true

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