apparare | i found something in the woods somewhere.

i found something in the woods somewhere.

open post.
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Balance.

( He snorts. Or, at least, gives her the closest approximation of a snort that he's able to while turning away and pacing the length of his containment cell. As he moves, he counts the number of strides it takes him to cross from one end of the bunk to the other - not many, by his estimate - while searching for any visible vulnerabilities in the construction of their crude design. Other than the damaged pressure seal that Rey stands next to, he can't find any immediate flaws despite knowing that they exist and wait to be exploited once her back is turned, once their backs are all turned. Rey affords him no such luxury for the moment, standing close to the glass that separates them as if she has been observing a new attraction on display, and he continues walking the length of the cell with the fluorescent light catching the unmuddied surfaces of his boots, reflecting dull white light back up at him. )

I fail to see how divulging that information would benefit me and not you in some way, given the circumstances.

( The thought that he should even the odds back in his own favor crosses his mind despite the threat of the Resistance just beyond the threshold. Maybe he could reach through the glass and do the same that she has done to him now, leave her unconscious on the floor while he does his damnedest to rip the bunker apart and escape, rends metal and twists wires and mows a clear path through the Resistance. Maybe he should press his hand against the glass and splay his fingers until he can feel her pulse fluttering in his palm, squeeze until she has no choice but to disarm the door and let him pass. Maybe, but Kylo can't imagine that retaliation would come easy in that regard, and something in her tone gives him pause. She's surprised him more than once today, in a number of ways he's not entirely keen on examining closely in his current situation, and he's in no mood to try only to find that he's failed and ruined his chances.

He turns his head upward, keeping her always in the scope of his peripheral vision despite knowing that it's highly unlikely she'll go anywhere. Kylo half-expects Snoke to already be inside his head and is almost surprised that it wasn't the Supreme Leader's voice in his thoughts calling him out of unconsciousness. It's unlikely that Hux has made contact yet, however, if the general still lives, though Kylo assumes with the way his own personal luck has gone this evening, Hux's death is hardly in the cards. It would certainly delay the inevitable, but Kylo tries not to preoccupy his thoughts with what's coming, what's waiting, focusing instead on Rey's tone of voice and eventually coming to lean against the glass right in front of her, one arm supporting him as churning, broiling energy seems to settle underneath his skin like an electrical current. He stares down at her with a grim sort of determination, the heavy weight of knowing better hanging around the corner of his mouth and the heavy cast of his brow. )

Oh. ( Regarding her in this way for a moment, he eventually straightens up, a tightly coiled wire of energy waiting to disperse. ) You're still under the impression that you can overpower him.

( He waits to feel her try to press into his mind for actual answers but feels nothing, not even a solid attempt to knock down his defenses. In a way it's a blessing: the majority of his remaining energy is dedicating itself to keeping everyone out of his head for the moment, certain that Skywalker is out there somewhere with the focused intention of breaking him down and cracking Kylo open like an egg. In another way still, he's unsure what to do with her distinct lack of action in that regard. If it were him, he would go searching for the answer himself. As it stands, he's left to suss out what trick she has up her sleeve in doing nothing at all, keeping his back to the wall, so to speak, while trying to come up with an exit strategy.

It occurs to him how easy it would be to just lie, to play into her hand and give the impression of breaking. It's a card that he does not immediately put away. )

[ Pacing the cage like he does makes her skin crawl, prickling with awareness of precisely how feral and unpredictable he is here, and she wonders if Leia and Luke addressed that struggle in proper form while she was off sleepily finding relief that Poe and Finn were safe. Wonders if they believe that her decision was the right one, once their not inconsiderable yet conflicting feelings on the matter have been set aside. ]

Not just me. [ But yes, she does. If she didn't believe she could, then any hope they had of winning this fight was already lost, and she won't deny the Resistance their hope like that when they'd been the ones to give her what she'd been looking for all this time. Luke and Leia would fight at her side, and their knowledge of the Force spanned decades and a civil war—it could not be discounted. ]

I've seen what he does to you. [ Finally, Rey abandons pretense and thrusts the truth of it at him, reminds him of the depths of his mind that she's scavenged in and what she's found there. She shuffles a small step closer to the glass, refusing to let the way he leans against it give the impression of intimidation. He does not scare her. Snoke does not scare her. They will not control her with fear and doubt. ] The Force is about more than the power Snoke uses to compel submission from you: it's about focus and peace. I get the sense that, based on what I've seen, you haven't known peace for some time, have you?

[ She remembers the stifling darkness, choking them, drowning them, the smoke filling his body like it were a mere vessel to control. The insidious shadows of Snoke's influence haunting the corners of his mind to various shades and degrees, but never truly gone. ]

( Her faith is misplaced, at least as far as Organa and Skywalker are concerned, and the expression he offers her in retaliation to what she's suggesting says as much. Rey might believe that her master and her general are powerful enough to withstand and combat that of the Supreme Leader, but Kylo has seen their failure firsthand, is their failure firsthand, regardless of the circumstances surrounding his defection from one side to the other. That is what she seems unwilling to see, that although he might have been guided and cajoled away from the Jedi with whispered promises and a conduit for all the power he possessed that made sense to him, he could not have taken the steps to bring him to where he - they - stand today if he did not want to take them in the first place.

It's that notion that he holds onto while leaning back away from the glass, hands balled into fists again, no adequate channel for the swelling tide of anger that continues to pitch and rise within him. It chokes him like mild claustrophobia, an innate desire to stretch his legs and arms in the confined space, and the leather that encases his palms creaks under the pressure of his knuckles. He begins to tug the gloves off, examining the burns that mar the flesh there with detached curiosity. They haven't been treated - there are even a few fibers of leather threaded through the cauterized skin - and the pain is raw agony when he flexes his fingers. )

You think because you looked into my head and saw something that you weren't expecting a couple of times, you can lecture me on the ways of the Force, preach to me about balance? About peace? About all the ways in which the Supreme Leader pales in comparison to Luke Skywalker? Your doctrine doesn't preach balance, Rey. It preaches obedience, just as you claim mine compels submission. Don't stand on the other side of the glass and pretend that you are any better than I am for believing in it.

( The thumb of his left hand presses into the tendons that stretch across the palm of his right, working at a knot in his saber hand while thrumming the little thread of pain that vibrates with each strum of his knuckle, and he takes a seat on the crude bench with his long legs bent in front of him. When he was an awkward, gangling boy, too tall for his own body, he would sit with one foot on top of the other. The Supreme Leader and the Knights - and the Order - broke him of that habit quickly enough. Now, under the high overhead glare of the light, he spreads his hands in front of him, fingers splayed to examine the burns, elbows on his knees, speaking to her directly. He keeps every atom and molecule of himself shut up and heavily defended, unwilling to let her or anyone else glimpse even a shimmer of what swirls inside of him. )

What do you expect me to say to you? ( His throat is dry and his voice hoarse, almost plaintive. His hair has turned into a very unflattering mop of frizzy waves in the damp air as it's dried, and there is mud - Kylo can feel it - that Organa missed caked underneath his ear. It's the least of his worries, presently. ) What do you expect me to give? Is it submission, obedience? Do you plan to protect me from the Supreme Leader's retaliation? ( His hands curl, and he glances down at the marred skin before returning his attention to her. ) What about the Resistance?

( 'Your friends' hangs heavily implied between them. Regardless of what happens, now or further down the line, of what angle he plays, Kylo can't imagine a world in which he is able to walk away clean. )

[ At first, she assumes he means to ask if the Resistance will protect him. It's only a moment later, after her lips have parted, that it strikes Rey that he means to know if she will protect him from the Resistance's wrath as well as Snoke's. On that note, she falters, jarred by the suggestion as much as by the slow creeping realization that he's right to wonder it.

Leia and Luke are forgiving, and even Rey would readily set bygones aside. But Poe suffered torture at Kylo Ren's hands, torture that he had not forgotten, that he had recounted to Rey while she'd been searching for answers on the subject of her own Force sensitivity back at the Resistance base later. Finn had lost his childhood to the First Order and watched Kylo Ren sic attack dogs on him after he'd escaped, been hunted across the galaxy, chased by the threat of further enslavement. Every Resistance member seems to have their own horror story of the First Order, a list as long as it is sordid, and Kylo Ren has made himself their poster child and general.

So the question bears consideration, and Rey slowly presses her mouth closed as she debates it in turn, steeling her nerves and trying to shut out any indicator that she acknowledges the potential brutality of the soldiers Snoke and his First Order have made of them. Truthfully, her plans ended well before rehabilitation of any kind, let alone consequences, for she had only thought as far as persuading him to want to remain among them, leaving everything else for later as mere fine print. ]

Those answers depend on you. [ A cop-out, perhaps, but an accurate one. ] I—nor anyone else—can protect you from the choices that you make. But if you choose a different path, I've brought you here so that you can have the help you'd need to take it. Snoke is powerful, and he would not suffer the loss lightly, but we have power of our own, and there is a reason why he seeks yours.

[ It's a surprisingly keen insight for someone who, before, had been so uneducated in the ways of war and the Force. Were Snoke as all-powerful as they all believed him to be, though, he would have no need to take advantage of the power that Kylo Ren offered him. To Rey, that meant that Kylo Ren would offer a real threat to him, if he were on the 'wrong' side of this fight. ]

Together, I believe we can stave off his reach. The rest comes after.

( There's some enjoyment to be found in watching Rey work out an impossible problem without skimming the surface of her thoughts to watch the process so absolutely. He watches her mouth compress into a thin line, her eyes go steely. Kylo waits for her to bottom out on an answer, keeping his knees bent and his feet planted firmly on the ground, his mind just as firmly shuttered against potential invasion. He doesn't place as much faith in her friends as she does, namely in Organa and Skywalker, considering what he's done to them. He has as much interest in asking for pardon as he assumes they will have in giving it. The destruction of Skywalker's entire academy notwithstanding, he stood across from a man they both loved and cherished, and he struck him down in an effort to make the final leap across a gaping maw of darkness, used it to extinguish what light remained in him with hopeful, desperate urgency. Killed Han Solo for his own gain.

It won't matter to them whether or not it worked absolutely. The cold, bright meltwater that washed over both Rey and him in the cavernous tunnels of his own mind will hold little sway with them when he is so focused on eliminating it at whatever cost. They see what's left of the boy in him as something to be encouraged, breathed into and ignited; Kylo sees it as a cancer, gaining more ground despite the heavy boot that he keeps pressed to its neck, trying so hard to extinguish it, ripping himself apart in the process. Skywalker and Organa may understand the conflict, given their sensitivity and Skywalker's own brush with the darkness in the past. Rey, Kylo knows just looking at her under the fluorescent wash from above them, would stand in his corner out of all of them, given what she's seen, what they have seen of each other.

He's almost taken aback to stumble upon the realization that he's actually considering and weighing the possibilities and then just as quickly disgusted with himself. Kylo Ren is no traitor, no matter what illusion he presents in order to get himself out of here, no matter what he saw of himself when he flooded into Rey's mind on Yaga Minor, lingering in the far reaches of his thoughts like a distant, half-remembered nightmare.

Rey provides him an opportunity to stop his train of thought by finally opening her mouth and speaking to him, though he finds himself unable to answer right away. She's remarkably astute for someone who more or less just realized she could use the Force five minutes ago, and it's her assessment of Snoke that gives him pause, that thrills something within him in an unexpected way. It's the closest thing to a compliment that he's received in quite some time. Though it's nothing that hasn't occurred to him before, the recognition of his own power has always come with the understanding that the Supreme Leader has taught him so much and still has more for him to learn, that only he could guide Kylo in his quest to achieve what someone far greater and far more powerful had been unable to finish. )

You tricked me into being brought here. Let's not get that part twisted. ( There is thinly veiled annoyance in his tone, but not outright anger, forcing himself to control that black mass that twists within him unless he would like to let it get the better of him. Something else Snoke had taught him following his fall on Starkiller. Anger was made to be controlled, not to control. His hands fold over themselves, mindful of his burns, and he leans forward more over his knees, balancing there while regarding her from under his brow. ) You can't speak for the entirety of the Resistance. It's a nice thought to think that they might let bygones be bygones were I to change my mind and find merit in what you're saying, but the reality isn't that simple. You're asking me to trade one leash for another. ( Kylo pauses, pressing his mouth into a thin line. ) According to you, I'm not even holding my own.

( He falls silent for a long moment, twisting one hand around the other in a way that stretches and shifts the skin unpleasantly and makes him grimace. In one swift motion, he stands, approaching the glass that separates them once more although he doesn't hover as close to it as he had previously. He starts to say something, mouth open and rounded around a thought, then thinks better of it and collapses his lips over a syllable, shuts his mind down so completely that he's confident that, were she to open a channel and reach for his mind, all she would find is the same black vacuum that he had been greeted with before their encounter here on Corellia. )

Even if what you're suggesting can be done, you said it yourself: the Supreme Leader is powerful. And I have told you before that you overestimate your own abilities in thinking you can confront him head-on and win. He will come for me eventually, Rey, and he will come for the Resistance, and he will come for you. That is the rest that you're so adamant in saying comes after. ( Another step toward the glass, mind blank but eyes wide open. ) What actually are you suggesting? A unified front? Meditation and focus and peace? How do you plan for us to keep him at bay?

[ If he's asking, does it mean he's interested, or intending to arm himself with as much information about their abilities and strategies as he could in order to better combat them? Suspicion, Rey quickly decides, will get her nowhere, thought it might ultimately protect the Resistance.

Anyone would want appropriate details before even considering something of this magnitude and consequence. It is natural. But she cannot forget the demon inside of this man, the one who hunted her and Finn like animals for a map to Luke, the one who killed his own father so that he could let go of the life he used to have. There is no overestimation of the threat he poses, regardless of what he has suffered.

The way he sits down, works his wounds, makes him look resigned at least to his fate, even as he blames her for it, and she decides to let that be the deciding factor in her reply. ]

I speak only for myself and my Master. [ Let that be clear first. ] The actions that the Resistance takes will be decided by your mother.

[ But more to the point, ] Master Luke tells me that force-bonds cannot be destroyed, but that they can be weakened and deceived. [ Just as she could not entirely cleave Kylo Ren from her mind, neither could he cleave Snoke entirely until such a time that the Supreme Leader was dead or gone. But they could dampen themselves from one another. ]

There is an old Jedi technique that can cleanse the effects of Force manipulations on a mind. It involves allowing the Jedi capable of performing the technique to walk your mind, but once it is done, you should be able to construct your own defenses against his bond with you, to dampen his perception and reveal only the parts of your mind you wish him to see.

[ She does not go into details, does not offer suggestions or methods or demonstrate. Until he decides that it is a task he would be willing to complete, she will not undergo any step that leads him on the path, for sharing that knowledge with the dark side could just as easily lead to it being twisted into something sinister. However, she does allow for a heavy moment's silence before drawing a conclusion that she has long since arrived at: that Snoke is capable of more than mere observation. ]

Unless there's more he can do than simply see into you that you're afraid of.

I am not afraid.

( His answer is petulant and automatic, the crispness of his tone buffered by the childish retaliation weaved in it. It's a lie, of course, to some degree. The fear that members of the Resistance, of the Order, of the known galaxy have for Snoke is different than the trepidation that Kylo harbors for his master. Their fear is distant and realized based on the perceptions they have of this figure lurking in the shadows, commanding his armies like a ghost, a wraith that breathes life and purpose into the First Order's mission. Their fear of him exists like a rumor, whispered quietly and spread from ear to ear throughout star systems as gossip. Kylo's fear of the Supreme Leader is intimate; he knows the strength of Snoke's absent grip at his throat and the careful, sharp touch of his master's pull in his mind, sifting through memories like dragging fingers through sand to get at the hard dirt underneath. Therein lies power, though, in that knowledge of the Supreme Leader's retaliation. )

I know about Force-bonds. ( As if he wouldn't, and his tone suggests as much, though his knowledge of their severance is less broad than he would appreciate. Mainly because it's never come up as point of discussion, certainly not between Snoke and himself. That connection has never been given a classification, besides, and he's not keen on labeling it now, even if describing it as a bond isn't wrong. It's certainly a link, if nothing else. ) And I think we're both well-versed enough on defending ourselves against the strength in their connections that you can spare me the Padawan-level inroductory lesson on the concept.

( He would like to walk away from her and retreat back into the shadows of the bunk, but there's no relief to be found in continuously pacing the length of the containment cell like a big cat with nowhere to displace its energy. So he remains, which allows her front row access to the combustion of his thoughts as he wrestles with himself. His mind isn't open to her, but every small movement at the corner of his mouth, the angle of his head, is its own tell.

It's a coin toss. For every way in which he feels the hard pull to needle her for information, slip his way in and convince her of his high treason with the sole purpose of exploiting her power and her misplaced faith in his ability to shuck the Dark Side like a layer of dead skin, there is a tiny, buzzing part of him that finds it actually wants to know the answers to the questions that he's asking. He knows without having to be told that the outcome of this is one that neither of them will want or anticipate, from any angle. He knows that Snoke - whether or not he can effectively reach across time and space to close his fist around Kylo's windpipe or impart in him new orders to carry out on behalf of the First Order and the Knights while he is mired in the Resistance's camp - will deal a hand they have shuffled and stacked the deck against.

She carries the weight of the Resistance on her shoulders in this task, Kylo can see that, and if she fails in any capacity, brings him or Snoke down on this grassroots campaign in that failure, she will bear that cross indefinitely. There is power to be found in that responsibility, and the power that he carries within himself in the same way raises its snout to acknowledge it. But he sees that tired sag in her shoulders and knows instinctively that it's the result of carrying him through miles and miles of Corellian forest, of chipping away at him piece by piece. Why she's lifted him at all, when she could have killed him, is as strange to him as the knowledge that he would have done the same were their positions switched.

Coin toss. )

I won't allow Luke Skywalker to walk around in my head, if that's what you're suggesting.

Luke wouldn't be doing it.

[ The reply is simple because she does not doubt his ability to eliminate the options and arrive at the reality that it would be Rey's responsibility. Because of her actions here, Rey has—however unintentionally—assured that what becomes of Kylo Ren will ultimately be her responsibility in all arenas.

That burden weighed in the way that Finn's first question after they'd warmly reunited with hugs and relieved, laughing tears, was suspicious interrogation on why she had not killed the unconscious Knight of Ren when she had the chance. He would have, he'd told her, and it's what Ren would have done to her. Poe's reaction was more understanding, expressing diplomacy that Finn did not possess, but the expectation and subsequent confusion still lingered. Poe had not forgotten his own run-in with Kylo's Force telepathy, and would not any time soon.

The guilt that flooded her in answer to their barrage of expectations did not erode her certainty of purpose, and though she could not adequately explain to them, who did not feel the Force as she did, who had never glanced into him to feel wracked with that fear, suffering, and isolation, she did not relent her position.

No. This was not Finn or Poe's matter to decide, regardless of how close they were to the matter as well. It was not Leia's or even Luke's journey anymore: it was hers. And she would be the one to decide what became of it. She would be the one to take the burden of searching his mind and attempt to scare away the darkness, to see for herself if it could be done or not.

And if it finds that she cannot, she knows what her responsibility will be then. What she must do, a step she has been too afraid to take, knowing that it grants the dark a foothold in her own mind. ]

( It is a simple reply and the most obvious one. As soon as the rejection of Skywalker's free pass to Kylo's mind had been established, perhaps as soon as he had thought the words to form them, he knew without question that it would fall to her to see this particular task through. He would be impressed if it weren't such an obvious conclusion, maybe even a little surprised that she would open herself up not only to the knowledge of what happens next should her task work but also to the dark inside of him itself, which might embrace her and find root as it has him. There is no surprise to be found in that possibility either, given her decision to let him show her the potential of that reality on Yaga Minor.

Although Kylo gets the impression that he doesn't have the luxury of time to decide - nor the luxury of a decision, in all actuality - he takes a moment to straighten up on his side of the command shuttle and turn his back on her. The effort of keeping his defenses raised so acutely for so long is an exhausting burden, and he feels a pressure beginning to build at the base of his skull. With no real concept of time save for the slant of twilight that he can perceive beyond the threshold of the shuttle, he can't accurately say how likely it is that Hux will have made contact with Snoke by now. It seems likely, at this point. Despite his failures today as a general, failing to report would look even worse.

Kylo works his throat and turns. Why is on the tip of his tongue, but he says instead -)

How confident are you in your ability to actually do this?

( The underlying insult is obvious but not reinforced, and he's not even trying that hard. He's called her a scavenger like it's a slur enough times in their brief history of knowing one another that the sting he delivered while interrogating her on Starkiller must have worn off by now. It's plainly obvious he recognizes that she's more than that, but her ability to actually perform is reliant upon how much training and of what caliber she has actually received. If she fails, then she fails, and if it came down to it and Rey found that she had no choice but to kill him in order to preserve her growing role in the Resistance's war, he would not begrudge her that decision but also would not, under any circumstances, allow her to see it through. His death is an absolute he will not allow her to hold in her hands. )

[ His slings and arrows can only sting if she considers them unwelcome and permits their injury, but this particular barb, well-placed as it is, strikes against a truth that she has long acknowledged. Where Kylo Ren's strength comes from training and experience, Rey lacks the same: her talents with the Force are intrinsic, easily picked up due to her lifestyle and history and her latent ability, not hard-fought skill and tested mettle.

In stark contrast to Ren's feral pacing, Rey is a redwood, boots firmly rooted to the ground as if they've been fixed there for centuries, allowing the blows to wash over her to no effect. It does not hurt her to accept this truth, and with the stakes what they are, perhaps even considers it wise to acknowledge out of the gate. ]

If we were to succeed, [ that disclaimer really says it all, hypothetical and wary, devoid of guarantees. The Force requires the commitment of certainty, but Rey knows her limits and accounts for them. ] It would be a first. Not just for me, but for any that Luke is aware of.

[ She does not qualify that with defenses about the records of the Order lost in the Galactic Civil War, decimated by the very genocidal eradication executed by the Empire in order to purge any trace of the Jedi from the collective memory of the galaxy as anything but a myth. Surely, it has been done before. Surely, some Sith was brought back from his mentor, those connections weakened and that influence purged as any Force ability could be.

Similarly, she does not bother educating him on what he likely already knows, that a cleanse can unravel Force abilities that have been exerted on the mind, but have not been used on a scale such as she describes. What they undergo is not a single psychic surgery, but hundreds of them, remodeling the twisted landscape left behind by Snoke's influence. ]

I won't do it unless you allow me. [ The stubborness in her voice is of a moral sort, and with it comes a relenting flicker in her brow that softens her gaze. The same strict adherence to what she believes is justifiable that had her carry him over miles of burning Corellian landscape to this base now stops her from forcing such a change upon him. She would be no better than Snoke if she were to bend him to her will simply because she may potentially have the power to do it (she can't really be sure, can she?). Worse, she knows the weight of what she asks: if they attempt this, there is no telling how different he could be when they resurface from the mind walk. ] And I don't think I can unless you allow me to see everything.

[ A tall order, to be sure, but the compassion thick in her voice seems to genuinely anticipate that he will accept her offer, that a part of him wants this, and that she can reach that part yet. Earnestness draws one of her hands up to the glass between them, and only when she feels the cold against her fingertips does she realize that she's leaning in with her efforts to persuade him. Her shoulders slump and she draws back slightly. ]

( He recoils from the glass as soon as he can see the lines in her hand pressed flush against it, not a harsh, jagged stumble back but the slow slouch of gently withdrawing, as if physical distance might impede the surge he feels within him. His eyes remain momentarily on the splay of her fingers, the width of her palm, and then raise to look at her directly. He searches her face for any signs of betrayal and after a moment of finding nothing but quiet, earnest determination, lowers the fortified walls in his mind that he has built brick by brick through the Force alone to check for cracks in her armor that way. It's a brief moment, but it is enough, not only to assure himself that she isn't lying but to also be flooded with the warmth of her acknowledging what's left of the light in him. Kylo feels her anticipation, her apprehension, her hardwired determination and moral righteousness. Compassion. Worry. Morality. Fear.

Whatever happens, now or ever, there will always be a line that splits them, from each other and from everyone else. Deep down, he knows that whatever she manages in her attempts to walk the hills and valleys of his mind, the fundamental aspects of him will not change. Her concerns regarding his rewiring are not so realized within his own thoughts. He's known since he was a child the kind of person that he was, even without Snoke's steady, unbroken stream of manipulations and promises and dark secrets there to guide him in the right direction. He's known without having to stumble upon the hidden image in his mind of the two of them turning to face Snoke that he would one day raise his hand against his master the way that the Sith who came before even Darth Vader had done. Kylo Ren may not be Sith, but the verse repeats all the same.

Her argument is compelling, even if she argues for reasons that do not necessarily resonate within him. He hasn't been able to remember silence since before he was five-years-old, that hazy point in childhood where memories could be memories or imagined realities designed to substitute them.

Kylo does not move for a very long time, stretching into the territory of minutes with the two of them simply standing and staring at one another. He reassembles his defenses brick by brick, piece by piece, not to keep Rey out necessarily but to delay the inevitability of Snoke's arrival for one minute longer than it might take otherwise, and then presses the bare flat of his hand against the glass where her palm has been placed. The surface is cool and solid, and the burn threaded into his skin grins back at him lopsidedly. )

Why?

( It's a question he had not anticipated asking, and it's raw in its genuine honesty. She could have killed him, back in the woods. She could have killed him on Starkiller Base. She doesn't want to exert power over him, doesn't want to control him or utilize his abilities for her means to an end. The reward of navigating his framework to cut Snoke's cord is directly proportional to the risk. She must realize the potential for this to go disastrously wrong in so many ways regardless of what they - she and Organa and Skywalker - hope to gain, and yet she remains. )

[ The steady lift of his hand to match hers is genuine enough to surprise her, eyelashes fluttering as she glances briefly down, then back up to search him. Rey's heart aches with the weight of his question—that he feels like he must ask it, that he cannot trust good will, that he is so damnably cautious with taking hold of the life raft she offers him now—because she knows what it means. That question is one more of the many scars he bears from years of manipulation and cruelty, isolating him from the only people who could help him.

It leaves her short of breath, not only because it's overwhelming to conceptualize, but because she understands it too clearly. Her stoicism tapers off into the thick tone of eager, swelling hope, twisting her expression into one that almost pleads with him to allow her that. ]

I want to help you.

[ It doesn't fully answer his question, though, in that it doesn't adequately express why she feels so driven to offer him this hand up, a question she's avoided asking herself since it began. His insistent disbelief compels her to turn inward now and pinpoint that moment in the vision he'd shown her of the two of them, side-by-side in battle, playing off one another with seamless ease into a more devastating threat for the light or the dark than either could be on their own.

And it affords her a simple sense of clarity.

Even when he's beside her, training her, Luke Skywalker feels miles away, a relic of another time, lost long ago and returned only as a learning tool and a guide, not a companion. And among the Resistance, there are no others with the skill or sensitivity to be Jedi, to take up the mantle and use the Force for the light. The responsibility has fallen to Rey and left her, in the wake of Han's death, even armed with Finn's friendship, precisely where she started. Alone.

It's like she never left that desert in Jakku, why even the calm and focused corners of her mind that she reaches out to silence the loneliness as she suffers insomnia are an island, silent for its isolation, not its peace. For as long as she can remember, Rey has been alone, and now she's seen a glimpse of what it could be like if she weren't. The cool serenity of understanding settles over her features, drawing the intensity of her passion out like a sieve.

Killing Kylo Ren would mean killing the one person who understands her experience and how she perceives the world thanks to the lens of Force sensitivity, and shutting herself off forever from anyone who could offer that specific empathy to her, which is sadly impossible for Finn or Poe, and he has expressed the same interest himself in his desire to teach her, to groom her. She knows, based on Han's stories, that Kylo Ren is the one responsible for ripping away any other opportunity to meet students of the Jedi way. It is his fault that she feels this fear. And yet …

The lure is not enough to draw her from the light, but that selfish desire is enough to make her desperate to pull him free from the darkness.

Some mixture of shame, surprise, and resignation strike her features and she breaks Kylo Ren's gaze with this realization, dropping her eyes to the spot where his hand touches the glass. She doesn't recoil, not fully, but her eyes tell the full story—she knows why, now, and she cannot pretend at ignorance any longer. ]

I refuse to believe that our fate lies in destroying each other.

( Her initial response is not the answer he is looking for, regardless of the sincerity in both her tone and the look she fixes him with. Rather than retaliating immediately, Kylo quiets the swell of annoyed, knee-jerk anger - he does not want her pity - and waits. It isn't easy. Patience has never been a strong card in the hand he works with, but he has the impression that what she grapples with internally is legitimate enough that he doesn't want to miss it by slamming the heel of his hand against the plane between them in an effort to shatter it. The thought does cross his mind, and he feels the keen absence of his saber as if it were a physical ache deep in the bones and muscles in his hands and arms, but he quiets it.

Instead of pulling back and then surging forward, his hand remains on the glass, watching conscious thought flicker across her face and behind her eyes like a series of candles being lit, one after another, after another. He doesn't need the Force to pick them out one by one, gathering them together like the pebbles he had cupped in his palm in the forest, but before he can assign them any real value or merit in his own mind, she looks away from him, cuts her eyes to where their hands might be pressed together if not for the paneling separating skin from skin, tendon from tendon, bone from bone. The slight bow of her head as she focuses the point of her perception toward the five-point star of his left hand is enough of a response in and of itself, and before she can open her mouth, Kylo has the distinct impression that he has an idea of what she's going to say in the same moment she does. It still isn't what he's expecting.

He watches the bow of her lips form syllables and speak but the weight and story in her eyes paint a clear enough picture for him without her words to solidify it. He holds very still where he stands, something in him shifting and settling into place. The image, the idea, of them, half-remembered, that he had shown her what feels like lifetimes and galaxies away, now, burns his retinas as if it's a reality. Darkness in him wells and sings, a chorus of echoes and whispers and chants, then quiets, dims, falls silent as he remembers laughter, tastes salt, smells the tang of the ocean and wet grass, thick moss, smooth stone beneath his palms, damp biting at his knee through his pant leg. Kylo thinks he can feel the warmth from her hand spilling through the glass and seeping into his own, and he pulls away so that the cool, filtered air of the downed shuttle can chill his skin where his palm has begun to sweat. )

I don't believe that either.

( It's a lot. When he speaks, it's with the careful, guarded quality of someone who does everything alone, who shares nothing of himself or his agenda with anyone unless specifically ordered to do so. Even Hux, who so frequently operates on a wavelength in tandem with his own, has no such advantage. None of his Knights. Captain Phasma. No one. The totality of his loneliness has not been so precise and crushing as Rey's - Rey, who spent decades on a desert planet, who sung herself to sleep on her shoreline dreams, still alone in her self-isolation even when she could imagine comfort anywhere, still alone in the bracket of arms she has fallen into. Rey: the island - but it has been present, it has been constant. It rests in the darkness within him and thrives. For her to reach for him with that sort of statement, to present it honestly and plainly with the promise of her intentions in what she plans to do, the look on her face wrought with the weight of it - it digs fingers into him and hooks, no matter how deftly he attempts resistance. )

I don't know the precise length of his reach or how Skywalker's presence might be problematic in his attempts to establish contact. Or yours. But if he were able to do anything other than reach out toward me, as you suggested, it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Leader's ire manifested itself in a physical way. ( He finally admits it after ignoring the question long enough for them to arrive at this bend in the conversation. With everything else that's on the table between them, it seems pointless to withhold information from her that will only assist him in the end. His tone is still reluctant, however, as if confessing a sin he's been holding onto for twenty years. ) His reaction depends largely upon what Hux tells him, and my absence, both from the Finalizer and from his perception of the Force. I haven't felt him try to reach out yet, but I'm hardly searching for him or opening the channel up to welcome him to look around. I doubt he would appreciate what he finds there. He will, though, eventually, recognize that something isn't quite as it should be.

( On Starkiller Base, he had screamed traitor at FN-2187's back so roughly that his throat had felt hoarse after. A voice inside of him shouts with the same intensity, and it resounds throughout him, all the way down to the soles of his boots. )

Edited 2016-01-19 01:28 (UTC)

[ Hope thrums like sparks flying off a steel mill, bright and fevered. For a moment, she believes she's misunderstood, but he keeps going, explains with candor the depths of his experience with Snoke's power and its extent, and Rey realizes that his reply means precisely what she thinks it does. Trepidation stutters her heartbeat and shortens her breath, chest expanding with the light feeling of elation that is so foreign she hardly recognizes it, mistakes it briefly for anxiety and panic. ]

Then we haven't got much time.

[ The task is neither quick nor simple, and if Snoke goes probing once they're both in Kylo Ren's mind, it may well damn them both. Without ever stopping to consider that the reply may be a ruse because it validates and bids goodbye to something she's feared for so long that she can't imagine letting go of the possibility. And she, perhaps boldly, accepts that confession as assent to her offered plan.

The last hints of tension ease out of her muscles and shoulders, showing her weariness for what it is, and the airlock hisses with release—her mistrust and Luke Skywalker's suggestion had kept the airlock sealed with the strength of her control over the Force as much as the basic locking mechanism, which she moves immediately to release with a series of button presses at the panel just out of Kylo Ren's view from within.

It takes a few moments, leaving him to his thoughts without an indication that she's still nearby but for her presence in the living Force until finally the airlock clicks and rotates like an clunky, rusted dial, creaking as it dilates and opens the glass casing. ]

( As Rey disappears around a corner, he steps away from the glass, retrieving his gloves from the bench behind him and curling them into one fist. His palms are still damp with perspiration, as is the back of his neck, and when he runs the bare flat of his hand over the skin there, it comes back with the flaking pieces of mud that Organa had missed when she bent over him and peered into his face. It's unclear to him whether or not it's a physical manifestation of the effort he is still expanding to keep his thoughts to himself or something else entirely. Whatever it is seems to work itself into a stone that drops into his gut, reaches up to pry at his ribcage with long, spindly fingers, not pulling him apart but hanging on with a desperate grip.

The airlock hissing open affords him the luxury of not having time to think about it in too much detail and with the rush of fresh air that greets him, sweeping in and bringing with it all of Corellia. Rain on the dirt. The heavy discharge of smoke and blaster fire still hot in the atmosphere. Flames. Smoke. He can't see her but knows instinctively that she's still there, and he waits for the airlock to slide back into place completely before stepping out of the makeshift containment cell, his footfalls heavy on the durasteel flooring of the command shuttle. Kylo looks up and down the length of the ship, beyond the immediate area to the cabin where he has piloted a shuttle not unlike this one himself, back down to the ramp that waits to spit him back out into enemy territory.

Rey materializes in his peripheral and then his complete view at the control panel, and he sizes her up now that nothing separates them, the gears that permitted him entry back to the outside world settling in place once the machinery tends toward idle. He could escape, now. He could slam her against the wall of the shuttle the same way he had thrown her like a rag doll into the dead branches of that tall tree on Starkiller. A voice purrs at him to do it. He doesn't. )

After you.

( Regardless of what's transpired here, no one here is going to let him walk out of a prison block ahead of Rey. )

[ Even being the one to open it, there's something startling about watching him walk out of the cell at his full height. Second nature, probably, to feel the stomach dropping sensation of shock when confronted by him, but it morphs quickly into a flicker of a relieved smile. He's on board. That's what matters. Her nod seems to be as much to confirm her resolve as to hearten him in stepping out of the shuttle with her, then she's at his side and guiding just a step ahead down the ramp into the Resistance camp.

If Kylo Ren had any illusions of the size of the Resistance after he devastated the Republic's fleet, they were corrected immediately. The camp spanned no more than a mile, pitched in tents stretched off of shuttles and X-wings and the scarce carrier or metal hut designed for encampment. Altogether, it gave the impression that they had accidentally staggered their way into this rebellion rather than premeditated it.

The fighters that strode past, most of them in flight jumpsuits with or without the vests that specified them as pilots rather than mechanics, were starkly disparate to the First Order's facilities in another way, though. They traveled in groups, none patrolling, but all earnestly hurrying around in a hush of concern or laughing and reuniting over a drink from shared canteens. But for Rey herself, not a single Resistance fighter stood alone in the camp.

They truck through mud, only drawing attention once they've crossed a handful of lopsided structures—less than a hundred feet off the shuttle, soldiers made their way from inside the tents to stand outside of them, humor dying off like they brought an airborne plague with them that spread through the encampment with each heavy step. Finn and Poe were among them, clearly resisting the instinctively sour expressions, and Rey avoided allowing their expressions to wound her by turning her head up towards Ren to say, ] Don't let it bother you. There weren't many here who expected that you'd take a way out if we offered it.

[ But she did. And Leia did. And in some ways, maybe she's reassuring herself that despite their judgment, she's making the right call, but she decides not to reflect too extensively on that, instead cutting a direct path for the largest and only reasonably sized structure among the camp, the only one that could rightfully earn the title of building.

Oval in shape, the squat metal dome housed the General and a war room for her to plot in. A number of other high-ranking officials had used it for their base on the ground as well, though most of them preferred remote operation. This battle was far from a sure bet for any of the Resistance, but General Organa had always been the sort to die with her people rather than remain in her ivory tower. ]

Tied up in your mind, your consciousness and mine won't be as tethered to our bodies as they usually are because of the meditative state we have to reach. Master Luke and General Organa will watch over us while we're there.

( It becomes very, very weird very, very fast to be walking across the Resistance camp with her undetained, unshackled, and conscious.

In a way, their hodgepodge set up surprises him even as it doesn't. The Resistance, while Republic-backed, is still a small sect with an alarming number of competent fighters. General Organa is their heart and backbone, and while it's true that their size does continue to grow as it recruits new supporters just as it has the Corellians, it's a well-maintained and gossiped about topic among First Order squints and higher-ups alike that Organa could keep the whole thing running and pushing ahead on her own merit, a universal belief that has always annoyed him. Kylo very seriously doubts the Resistance's ability to overpower the First Order without Corellian support and the element of surprise, but the fact remains that they had both today, and now Kylo is following this scrap of a girl through their barracks with a target from every pair of eyes painted on his back.

His boots leave deep impressions in the mud, and he has to shorten his strides so that he doesn't outpace her and pull ahead. The scene that unfolds before him is as jarring as it is unfamiliar, and the rising pitch and swell of laughter that breaks out in peals in different corners of their campsite registers as strange. There is no such debriefing following First Order victories. A breech in protocol of that degree would not be tolerated under any superior officer. Their jovial celebrations and loud, whooping calls to one another warm no part of him, don't take root or dislodge the cloying feeling that still latches somewhere beneath his lungs, and he makes no effort to look a single one of them in the eye as they stride past until a ripple in the Force turns his attention away from their destination.

Poe Dameron and that traitor stormtrooper are watching him as he and Rey pass by the tent where they are stationed. An electrically charged hush falls throughout the gathering of hastily assembled lean-tos and a droid whistles disdainfully somewhere in the thick of things. Dameron in particular looks like he isn't entirely sure what to do with his face as Kylo meets his eye across the muddy yard that spans the distance between them. Without his helmet, there is no question as to whether or not the creature that exists beneath the armor is human or not, even if the truth of his parentage isn't necessarily common knowledge. Ben Solo died so long ago that he could exist as much as Luke Skywalker did before Rey brought him back from exile, a myth. The last time he saw Poe Dameron without a mask, he was barely ten-years-old, to tall for his own body, awkward and burdened with darkness that spilled out into every unfavorable reaction and childish whim. Kylo looks at him now and wonders if Dameron even recognizes him as the boy who used to poke his head into starships with the kind of curiosity that might one day lend him to being a halfway decent pilot.

The extended olive branch of Rey's voice draws his attention away from that particular memory and he clips his words short to emphasize their meaning. )

I'll try not to lose sleep over it. ( He follows her abrupt change in direction without a falter in his step, almost as if expecting it. ) Although maybe I'm the one who should be saying that to you.

( Rey leads him another hundred yards or so toward the squat, gray building and he feels a surge in the Force roll over him like a wave. Their combined presence had been a hard pill to swallow when he was a child, but it had been a source of warmth and reassurance for him then. Particularly Organa. Now, the two of them together overwhelm him and drag him down in their currents. Even without seeing them, he's aware of their proximity the way he is aware of a planet's gravitational pull. This is more tangible even than that. It saturates his mind and all his senses like being submerged in bacta. He's unwilling to let his steps falter, unwilling to show weakness in front of her and in front of them. He follows her inside the command station and focuses on the pain in his hands, a single point of stability against the backdrop of calamity. A flash of gold catches the light from the ceiling and Kylo can hear something that sounds suspiciously like I'm terribly sorry, captain. I've been telling the general for decades that his wiring's no better than scrap metal, but - )

There's the very real chance that the Supreme Leader will intervene once he's aware of what's happening, which I anticipate won't take long once I stop focusing solely on cloaking myself from him. You are running the risk of bringing him down on you as well as everyone else in the base. ( He pauses to let that sink in for a moment, though he assumes that it's a thought that's already crossed her mind, and continues pointedly ignoring everyone who looks at him twice. The back of his neck is still damp. ) I hope your faith in Skywalker and Organa's abilities as babysitters isn't misplaced.

Yes, thank you, I gathered.

[ The clipped edge of her tone strikes as familiar in how it rebuffs him—she doesn't bother with schooling her countenance to calm and controlled, but instead lets herself snap back in a show of nerves.

If she fails, Kylo Ren or Leader Snoke or both will run the base into the ground.

If she fails, Luke Skywalker and General Organa will die, and the Resistance with them.

Worst of all, she will not die with them. The guilt will be hers to carry for as long as it takes for Kylo Ren and Snoke to give up the hope of converting her to their ways, or for Snoke to view her as more threat to his control over Ren than potential to add to his strength. It is a hard thing, for a survivor to imagine a fate worse than death, this potential outcome manages to plague every corner of her mind with nightmarish flashes. ]

With their combined strength, it shouldn't be impossible for them to mask your presence here for a short while longer.

[ Unfortunately, 'should' and 'short while' are both insufficient reassurances, but by the time Rey can think up more, they've stopped inside the inner sanctum of the Resistance's war room where Luke and Leia wait, talking in hushed but passionate whispers. It sounds like a disagreement, resignation written across Luke's features that doesn't inspire faith in Rey.

Still, she turns to Ren and nods for him to join her in approaching them, lifting her chin in a way that offers the impression not of professionalism and merit, but rather of a child putting on airs and playing at soldier. ]

He's agreed, and confirmed the concerns we had regarding Snoke's involvement. The sooner we begin, the better.

[ Organa doesn't seem to hear her, sorrowful dark eyes fixed on the face of her son, studying the terrain of his face as if she had to memorize it, searching out every difference, the scar left by Rey, the hard set of his gaze that was so different from how he'd looked as a child, where it was curiosity lighting them, not the fires of rage. ]

Do you have a space ready?

[ In a snap, Leia nods, and with only a passing comment that It's good to see you back on your feet to Ren, leads the way to a back room beyond the circular war room. Luke wears the same cautious but mournful gaze that Rey had first seen on him, fixing it unerringly on Kylo Ren's, guilt thick in the furrow of his brow and the tug of his lips. This is a mess that he made, and he does not immediately speak for that reason alone, solemn in accepting his part in it. ]

( He suffocates. Sweat rolls down the back of his neck and bleeds into his collar under the careful, scrutinizing gaze that Skywalker and Organa fix him with from across the room. They are a unified front despite the quiet argument preceding Rey's arrival with him in tow. He hangs back a moment, and Rey takes point as she has the entire duration of their hike across the mile long stretch of Resistance territory in leading him to them. No amount of uncertainty paralyzes him, and he realizes after Rey has taken exactly three steps in the general and her master's direction that what he's been carrying with him, tucked up behind his ribs and hiding in behind the solid wall of his sternum, is fear.

He's carried his gloves this far in the large span of one hand, and he crumples them tighter under the pressure of his fingers as he strides forward after her.

Kylo can't decide if he should choose one of them and maintain eye contact or look at neither of them to show that he isn't intimidated, that they hold no sway over his decision to see this through. In the end he settles for staring Luke Skywalker down with all the weight of what has transpired between them trapped within a short distance of ten feet or so. He cannot and will not look at the general, even if he feels her staring at him so intently that he's sure she wouldn't notice if Rey broke down the act of a dutiful soldier that she's putting on and stood on her head. He does not even entertain the notion of trying to slip into either of their minds and see what's going on inside of them, but he does let loose some of the latent frustration he feels at being this close to the man he had hunted across the galaxy only to lose because of the girl at his elbow.

Organa retreats to lead them away from the main area with a clipped platitude in his direction that he does not return, following them all while still refusing to meet the general's eye even as she very overtly and resolutely continues to commit the angles and lines of his face to memory, tries to reconcile them with the image that she must have of him locked in her head from years ago. Han Solo had worn the same expression for a moment, and recalling that he had summons the image of him speared through the middle with a burst of red light. Skywalker turns his face in Kylo's direction abruptly, and he feels oddly speared himself to be on the receiving end of that gaze, rife with sentiment that he can't read and doesn't want to. So he ignores it, maneuvering through a set of elbows and stepping around a small command post where a couple of officers pour over traffic reports while sipping on something that he can smell even from his distance.

As Organa shows them into the room they have set aside for whatever is to happen next, Kylo gets the distinct impression that he is living in a dream, for all the absurdity of the situation. She approaches him, and he can see the word Ben on her mouth before it even has a chance to be fully formed. Don't, is all that he says, finding his tone less cruel for all its brevity than he had anticipated. It strikes him how small she is next to him. Ironic, given how large she looms in the eyes of the Resistance and the Order, not to mention his memories. Despite her unquestionable strength of character and conviction, Organa does not plunge recklessly ahead by completing the thought he had quelled before it had a chance to be finalized. The risk she takes is greater, reaching a surprisingly smooth hand up to catch the scar tissue running nearly the length of his face with the tip of her thumb. Kylo smells powder, oil, rainwater and something else, something new. )

Rey. ( He pulls away from the general's questing touch and moves toward her, keeping Skywalker in his peripheral like he's waiting for an attack to come from any angle. With no saber at his belt - Kylo suspects that it's with Skywalker, though he can't be positive - he feels naked and exposed, doubly so without the helm, leaving his expressions bare for the world to see. Finally, he turns to his uncle and says with no affection - ) Your move.

[ As surprised as she is to hear her name spoken as if he were reaching out for a lifeline, it is dwarfed by the ripples left by his step towards her as flinches from his mother's touch, overwhelmed by the warmth of her hand. The embrace offered to her by General Organa when they returned from Starkiller Base victorious remains the first and only memory that Rey possesses of maternal care and attention, and the realization that Kylo Ren could so adeptly refuse it staggers her as surely as watching him drive a sword through his father's chest had.

Her eyes flutter through a series of stumped blinks, and she raises a hand as if to reach out for him, either to support his arm or nudge his back like she were coaxing a cautious deer forward—whatever the intent, her hand never reaches him, dropping when he finally confronts Luke.

Master Skywalker's age belies the strength of his conviction, and he does not hesitate to answer Kylo Ren's antagonism, but neither does he meet it with similar standoffish aggression. Instead, he keeps his tone level and informative, painfully patient if anything. He starts by calmly asking if Rey has told him everything, and she quickly cuts her head in with enough suddenness to make discourage him from speaking further. Luke considers it a moment, something unreadable but still understanding in his eyes, mournful in how it urges her towards something.

Instead of carrying that thread through, he explains that he and Leia will attempt to use the Force to block Snoke from sensing Ben—for he will not call him anything other than Ben, regardless of how his nephew has rejected Leia—themselves until such a time that Rey and Ren are able to complete their own task within his mental landscape.

He steps further into the room as he speaks, leading Ben and Rey around to a flat and functional sitting area where steel chairs, bare of any cushions or padding, sit just off the floor, squat and broad enough to serve as a bunk; they sit parallel to one another, but several feet apart in the cramped space, as if they were once part of a soldier's barracks.

Rey touches Kylo Ren's elbow as she passes him and sits on one, stripping off muddied boots to fold bare feet beneath her. Her palms rest on her thighs, but she lifts one to gesture for Ren to mirror her position. ]

The mind-walk is achieved through deep meditation, pushing both of our minds beyond the physical world and into the deepest shadows of your own. [ Her eyes flicker briefly up to where Luke stands off to the side, and quickly avoid fixing on him for any extended period, instead darting back to Ren as she warns him, ] I can't tell you what it will look like there, or how long it will take us to return. [ The tightness in her shoulders and her jaw betray that there is more still to be said on the subject, but she does not offer it. ]

( Skywalker's lack of aggression bothers him. Borderline unnerved, Kylo keeps his chin tipped down and his gaze level, taller than literally everyone in the room but hunkering down within himself as if expecting an attack. He can't stop staring at his uncle, and it's neither with kindness nor disdain, a sort of in-between state of antagonized wonder. For all his efforts, for how far he had extended his reach, had pushed the Order, the Knights, and their resources to find this man, this shell of a human who had stood so tall in so many varying ways when Kylo was so young, for him to be standing here so plainly in front of him, brought back from nowhere by the jagged will and determination of a girl who reaches out for his elbow at the frustrating betrayal of his own voice inquiring after her - it's enraging.

For all intents and purposes, he may as well be pouting, but seeing as he's nearly thirty and that sort of behavior is beneath him, his face schools itself into a mask of fierce and rapt attention, the hungry cast of his gaze darkly directed at the floor when Skywalker looks pointedly at him. The storm that rattles around inside him beats itself into a frenzy every time the old Jedi drops a name that has been systematically wiped from databases and banned from being spoken aloud. Han Solo had been the last person to say it at any decibel, and hearing it forcefully repeated as if to drive home a point is enough to turn his grip white-knuckled. No matter what happens, there's no hope for that name carrying any meaning once this is all over. He can feel it deep down on a molecular level, where the Force swirls and rises and drowns everything beneath it.

Arguing the point seems moot, especially so when Skywalker pins him so deflty under that sharp blue, beseeching look that dares Kylo to disagree. He lets down the first line of defense in retaliation, a crack in the glass of his expression appearing and splintering the heavy cast of his countenance into something that vaguely resembles poorly suppressed anger and something like hubris, chin moving from its position pointed toward the floor to settle at an angle. The line of his jaw tightens with each staccato presentation of that word - Ben. - as it accentuates the details of their plan and his role in it, molars digging into one another as he suppresses the very real desire to fight someone. That desire is quelled almost instantly by the cleansing fire of his own amused skepticism regarding his mother and his uncle's ability to keep Snoke from seeing what's happening, a borderline-imperceptible twist at the corner of his mouth and the slightest exhale through his nose.

Rey's palm is warm against the barely-damp fabric covering his elbow, the weight of her hand present through the layers of his armor and the flightsuit underneath. It's the second time that she's touched him today and the third time - to his knowledge - that anyone has. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, and his arm tenses all the way up to the shoulder, suspicious, on edge, ready for an altercation, and he watches her sit down and tug off her boots without deflating, consciously aware of the other two people in the room and the position that he finds himself in. Kylo spares one backward glance at a family from another time and then glances once more at Rey again before ultimately sitting down, folding into himself with no amount of grace or comfort.

In motion, he is solid but fluid lines and angles; in repose, he betrays bits and pieces of the awkward Padawan that he used to be. But he does sit. Refusing to strip out of his boots the way that she has, Kylo Ren folds long legs into a traditional meditation position and does not feel at ease. He considers divulging his difficulties with meditation - how he finds it useless, how he lacks the ability to focus so completely the same way he lacked the ability to divest himself of all emotion while training as a Jedi - but something in the set of Rey's shoulders, the look on her face, snags his attention before he can begin considering how to bring it up. )

Something you're not telling me?

( Kylo ignores the other two figures in the room, zeroing in on Rey and letting the world blur at the edges as he tries to decipher whether or not she is hiding anything of import. )

[ For a moment, she's struck by the jarring and deceptive familiarity of the situation. Kylo Ren cannot look intimidating sitting across from her with no clear idea of what to do with his gangly limbs, and he fails in playing the part of the villain from this angle. In fact, it's all she can do not to allow a smile to bubble up—for a moment, anyway. She finds a great deal more ease in it after he points out her own discomfort. ]

There are a great many things I'm not telling you.

[ Her favorite color. How they plan to celebrate Finn's birthday, or give him one at all. The date of her last menstrual cycle. Biting sarcasm waits on her tongue in multitude, ready to lash, but Rey catches sight of Luke out of the corner of her eye and his paternal disapproval tamps down her upstart urges.

The flick of her eyes to the opposite corner betrays how begrudgingly her explanation is made, but she makes it all the same. ] Only one that matters to the task at hand.

[ Some of the fight drains out of her, starvation dwindling the flame of her disobedience, and her eyes fix reluctantly on Kylo Ren—gentle, but firmly guarded. Her stubbornness in holding out has not fully relented to necessity, it would seem, in great part because she knows it will have to. ]

There's a good reason I'm the one walking you through this process, and it's not for your comfort. [ The truth draws out of her a little at a time, facing resistance as her lips drag it from the depths of her chest where she tries to lock it away. Though her voice remains a steady pulse, tension sticks in her throat and twists her words to side-step her own inextricable involvement. ] Master Luke believes that the reason you and I have been able to reach one another across such great distance is due to a bond, one that could be strengthened and used to force Snoke out.

[ For weeks, she has kept her mind clamped down like a vault, sealed and inhospitable to him, desperate to isolate her mind and make it her own again, training herself to be the one who rules the terms of such a connection under Luke's tutelage. Now she speaks of plunging back into it and counting on that unnerving link to solve the one problem Han Solo could not talk his way out of.

If they were wrong, or if either of them were to get bogged down in resisting or holding out, it would fail—unquestionably. Asking him to be willing to show her everything was not a simple request, but a requirement; they would slough through the catacombs of his mind in tandem with the hope that exposing her to the truth of him would shine the light into dark places and leave no room for Snoke's shadow to prey upon him as it once had. The solution was Leia's, even if the knowledge was Luke's. ]

You will have peace in your mind, I promise you. [ The rush of her words, an afterthought, seems to bear her hope that she can say the same for herself. ]

( His gloves, Kylo realizes, are still caught up in the fierce strength of his grip, and by degrees he releases the pressure in his hand to let blood pound back into his fingertips, tossing leather to the side and smoothing his hands over the rounded points of his knees. The bite of his burns is less extreme, tempered by adrenaline and distraction - and, he suspects but doesn't examine, some sort of influence that Organa does not even realize she is exerting - and they become less twin focal points of razor-fine, precise rage and more throbbing reminders of the failure that he has suffered today. They're reminders of the inevitable: that Snoke is not far beyond the veil that he uses to mask himself, that beyond the fortress of this room, this base, the Supreme Leader waits for him with cold patience. )

So he's using you.

( His voice is calm, conversational, and Kylo says it mostly to needle her for her previous backlash against him - he could look for what her favorite color was and dig it out of her head if he really wanted to - and although he can feel Skywalker looking at him, the conversation is his and Rey's alone.

Kylo might say it just to grate on her nerves, but the fact remains that it could easily be construed as truthful. She might not see it the way that he does, but at the end of the day that's what she is as much as he has been: a tool, a cog in the machine, an extension of her master's arm to reach the depths that he cannot. It doesn't matter whether or not her goals work in tandem with Skywalker's, just as it doesn't matter whether or not Kylo's ambitions meet Snoke's goals stride for stride. That Skywalker recognizes the connection that has formed between them - long suspected and now made concrete by the admission of a man more knowledgeable than Kylo himself, he can admit that much - says enough on its own merit. Their bond is exploitable, malleable, and he sees it plainly for what it is in their eyes, the same way that he could distinguish it in Snoke's. And his own. It's not so different from what they were able to show each other on Yaga Minor, but it has a different flavor and cadence from what he tasted and felt thrumming through his veins and down the back of his throat.

He cuts the head from any whiplash anger she might snap out with at the suggestion he makes by leaning forward toward her somewhat, voice low between them but hardly low enough to discourage or prohibit anyone from hearing him. Kylo knows that isn't a luxury just as much as the luxury of having time to make a decision regarding this whole endeavor wasn't back on the command shuttle. )

Two sides, same coin. I told you before I understood the workings of a bond. ( He does not meet her eyes when he inclines toward her but looks instead at the shadows of mud still worked into the creases of her hands. The weight of the risk that she is actively and voluntarily taking catches him off guard somewhat in that moment. Opening herself to him and vice versa in order to eradicate Snoke leaves her open to him potentially without an expiration date, to having something monstrous in her head. He looks up, meeting brown eyes in the sea of her face, and holds. ) Why else would I let you try?

( The fact remains that he would not allow any of the other Force capable individuals in the room close enough to even consider it. It's a damning and frustrating actualization but no less true for all the contempt it inspires. He exhales slowly, through his nose, and leans back away from her, already feeling the beginning disintegration of the defenses he has constructed in his own mind in an effort to keep himself walled away, whether by Skywalker and Organa's shouldering of the burden or his own exhaustion finding root and digging in. Kylo flexes his hands on his knees and sits up straight. )

You should be aware, meditation is not my strongest card. ( His voice becomes somewhat mocking. ) I've been told I lack adequate focus.

[ His words and the weight they carry threaten her, sticking in her throat and threatening to close it with thick dread, all of her energy shrinking to withdraw into her gut as if to shrink away from the darkness intrinsic in the force of his belief. To accept that Luke is using her for her power is logical, and in this case, their only option, not like the consuming manipulation that Snoke exerts over Kylo, but it seems a slippery slope.

Through sheer force of wheel, she draws a breath and forces herself to open to him despite all her reservations and fears, sundering them to preserve her certainty. What she does here, she must do, no matter what dangers she feels it poses to open herself to his mind as much as he opens himself to hers.

It only occurs to her as he leans forward that he could just as easily be seeking to spread the influence of Snoke's way to the corners of her mind in doing this.

Her eyes shift then to Luke, searching for some form of comfort in him, but he extends nothing to her; in that moment, she finds herself missing Han Solo's brief but sympathetic glances, even if when he offered them, she bristled against what she then perceived as pity.

She swallows thickly and nods. His insufficient calm for meditation only aggravates the threat that he poses to her, a pot ready to boil over and scald her, bursting at the seams with untempered power fed by fury and hurt, but she does not let it show beyond the flicker of her eyes to his hands, examining the burns he is no longer working. Her eyes lift to level on his, and the space between them swells, then crumbles. All at once, even the several feet between them feels like too intimate a closeness, and her breath falls from parted lips in time with his. ]

I can guide you. [ Rey, for her part, excels in meditation, though she would not brag on it in answer to his jape. Clearing her mind and finding a calm center comes as easily to her now as it did on Jakku, when those open spaces and her own company were all that she had for more than a decade. Even the harsh grit of the desert soothes her now, rolls over her skin without buffeting it, and it's the desert that she finds when her eyes drift shut. ] Focus on my voice.

( For all the time it takes Rey to submerge herself in the practice, it takes Kylo twice as long. He can't divorce himself from the world around him as easily as she can, finding little comfort or security in the duo who stand watch over them, casting a wide net around Rey and him to shield them from view, likewise in the structure itself, so vulnerable to attack should the right bombardment fall, should the Order return to finish what the Resistance started. Fear clouds the path to peace, the calamity of his mind not quieting even as he actively works to dismantle his previous guards against the Supreme Leader in order to leave him open to the possibility of submerging himself.

It's a laborious process, focusing on his exhales, on her inhales, the distance that expands and contracts between them like a living, breathing organ. He knows that he has to commit but even in knowing that, it's difficult to disengage from the world around him. Kylo has spent full hours trying to achieve the sort of focus necessary for meditative tasks less substantial than this and found it taxing and difficult, borderline impossible for the tempest of his thoughts. It rankles him now, getting the sense that this comes as naturally to her as anything, which in turn distances him from detaching the way he needs to, rooting him firmly in this weakness and frustration. He stares at the wall behind her in an attempt to ground himself, the slight curl of her hair around the heightened point of her forehead, the slope of her neck, and then settles for the bridge of her nose before meeting the cut of her eyes across the distance between them.

The world grows to insurmountable extremes, too large to be contained within the walls of this room, universes spanning the space between fingers and stretching into infinity between them, mountains and plains and the roll of the ocean, before collapsing like a supernova.

He does not close his eyes but keeps them fixed on hers. Kylo is unsure of how long he sits like this, hands on his knees, watching the words form on her mouth and then not at all, the vaguely Imperial lilt of her accent clear in his head and then again in the atmosphere as it changes over time. The room is still the room but it's not, crowded with sand, the desert stretching before them under a cloudless night, pockmarked with stars and twin moons. One is the deep harvest red of the Corellian season; the other is so startlingly white that it looks carved from bone. He gets the sense that they are on Jakku, dunes rolling the sandstone plains like waves transfixed in time, stuck out of place like the scuttled Star Destroyer notoriously grounded during the planet's big battle. Wind touches the sweat on the back of his neck, even under the high fabric of his armor, and chills his skin while the moons cast odd shadows on the ground. His is long and lean as it stretches out behind him. Rey is twenty paces or less from him, and when he takes a step in her direction the ground supports him like solid stone even as he expects it to swallow him whole. )

Rey. ( Her name out of his mouth again. His own voice is clear and unobstructed, a direct channel between them. He finds her easily there, in the dark. ) Is this my mind, or yours?

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every time i think i'm not gonna write a novel, i write a novel -__-

it's ok i love it !! also did you see SNL pls tell me you saw SNL

this tag is dedicated to matt the radar tech

he told me kylo ren is shredded

i ran into him in the bathroom and he wanted me to give you this card

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