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i found something in the woods somewhere.
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open post.
▬ action ▬ prompts ▬ continuing threads ▬ force shenanigans |
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open post.
▬ action ▬ prompts ▬ continuing threads ▬ force shenanigans |
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LMAO I THOUGHT THAT WAS ON PURPOSE my b
Kylo Ren's discomfort with his mother's arrival comes as no surprise, and it makes it too easy for Rey to dismiss it—and with it, her own, for she accepts implicitly that it is a result of the bleed of his mind into hers.
Her eyes, though, remain fixed on the fanfare of the Resistance fighters in the hangar who cheer and continue their victory celebration, several pilots clapping one another into hugs and rejoicing not that they had maneuvered past the First Order-riddled Corellian space in the wake of the fight, but that their fearless leader had. Joy which should be contagious barely makes a dent in the barrier surrounding Rey, a gloomy shroud of Kylo Ren's fear and unease. ]
Good morning. [ She advances, squinting up through the sunlight to peer out of the hangar and grin against the approach. ] Your mother's arriving. Believe me, you're the only one among us who considers that to be so stridently dread-inducing. [ But she slows, nearing the back of the group of Resistance fighters, and takes notice of the Hapans' comparable reserve towards Leia's approach. Turning her head, she notices it's not just some, but all of the Hapans who appear to hold stiff reservations moving too far forward to greet her.
The observation sticks in her teeth like gristle, stymieing her ability to celebrate the arrival and joining with her own ill sentiments towards the arrival as well as Kylo Ren's ominous promise of something. A more experienced Jedi would recognize it immediately as a disturbance in the Force, but then, Rey hasn't been granted the usual training process for Jedi, particularly not when reaching that conclusion would require her to look past the smiling veneer of lying faces around her. ]
YOUR RESPONSE WAS PERFECT /discreetly tags while in class la la la
( Similar to Rey's inspection meters and meters from where Kylo attempts to untangle his boot from the bed sheet, he runs the flat of his tongue over the inside of his cheek, searching for the culprit while getting unsteadily to his feet. His legs are liquid: an unfortunate side effect of having lain in a cramped position for the better part of two hours and an embarrassing result of being completely disoriented from the draining quality of the dream he had experienced. The wobble in his step leaves him reeling and angry, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the nearest surface that he can find as he wills some of the blood flow to return to traitorous appendages.
Weak boy, that voice says again. Kylo tells it to shut up and punctuates the command with a sharp, open-handed slap against metal paneling, stinging his palm and making the bones that run the length of his fingers vibrate with the impact. It also has the unfortunate result of bouncing around the walls of his own mind and tumbling across the bond that he shares with Rey. )
Shut up. ( The only benefit is that it doesn't sound as petulant as it might given the criticism that she's tossed so casually at him prior to him replying at all. It sounds like a command, an order, and while Kylo doesn't expect Rey to take it lying down, he also - perhaps falsely - expects her to listen to him as a result of the harshness of his tone. Everything that follows has a brusque quality, half a manifestation of his heightened sense of awareness and half because he's busy trying to get out of the ship. He has no idea where Chewbacca is, if he's gone to the hangar to watch the general's arrival or gone for more parts or if he has two massively hairy arms buried in the innards of this ship's underbelly, but he spares no time to wonder or search him out. He stops only in the hold to pull the tunic he had been wearing earlier over his head, cinching his waist with the broad swatch of leather that makes up his belt so that he can clip his saber to it. Kylo realizes that he looks ridiculous, but he can't shake the feeling that he's going to need it. Hapan prejudices be damned. ) Something is wrong. I can sense it. Can't you?
( His lightsaber smacks into his thigh as he takes long strides down the cargo ramp, and Kylo slips his hand down to his hip to wrap his fingers around the hilt, a measure of comfort and security. Knowing that it's there makes him feel more at ease, even if a cold prickling sensation has begun working its way up his spine. The immediate area is devoid of Hapans, leaving the docking bay filled with a sparse smattering of mechanics and Resistance pilots still working on getting their own ships space-worthy again. Kylo ignores them all, ignores the way they watch him move, hating him and marveling at him and some of them looking away discreetly as he stomps by. He lets his feet and the incessant pull of Rey's great sunspot within the Force pull him where he needs to go. More strongly, whether he wants to admit it or not, he feels Organa, a gathering of glimmering stones on a long distant shore, a lighthouse encased on either side by craggy rock. )
I had a dream. ( Kylo realizes how stupid that sounds the minute that he says it, but there's no changing it. The only word that wants to manifest on his tongue is Dryx. DryxRenDryxRenDryxRen. Rey's feelings, her perceptions of something coming, something bad, flood him. ) Where are you? ( He asks it even though he doesn't have to, hoping to cut down on arrival time by not forcing himself to sift through the present consciousnesses of every person around him. Eyes track him when he leaves the docking area, they track his blade. ) Tell me what you see.
Sameeeee
The ever-present, pounding and anxious strain rippling out from Kylo’s mind leaves stains on her own, making it hard to determine what is her ill sentiment and what’s his—intellectually, she acknowledged the threat of precisely such a consequence when she endeavored to free him from the inexorable hold Snoke had over him, but to feel it interfering with something so important so acutely makes her less amenable. ]
How could I, through the interference you’re providing? [ But then, that’s not entirely true. The hesitant pulse of unease came before he woke, and though it would be easy to attribute it to his restlessness, that explanation left her cold with its insufficiency. Brown eyes track up to the sky to follow the approach of the shuttle, reaching out towards it with the Force to search the ship and the air around it for the source of the discomfort, but it seems harmless enough.
A second sweep finds the thorn.
Like a silken thread tethering the ship along its path to the ground, the twang of the swirling connection of energy sounds wrong, like an ill-tuned instrument. The fields of her mind open up and welcome Kylo Ren to the same view and perception she has, lifting away the thin cloak of dark that divides them and revealing the map of tendrils that infuse and guide every living being through the Force, but also the flight chief and the nearby ships that will help to guide him to her location.
Turning her attention, Rey searches the hangar for the source of the taint in the landing when the ship itself is harmless, and the cancerous taint spreads, thicker behind her, shrouding the Hapans. The flight chief standing near her passes orders to warriors who filter by, ordering them to prepare landing equipment, but not quarter. ]
They’re not going to help us. [ The realization is not truly spoken, not immediately for his benefit, but crashes in all at once as the inevitable synthesis of the stimuli that flood her as an indisputable fact. Leia Organa will not be welcomed here. With it comes dread—the longer Leia stays on this planet, the larger the yawning darkness at the edge of the Force will grow, the more danger she will be in. ]
It’s the planet. [ Not literally, perhaps—though she can’t be sure, if she’s honest—but in a significant enough majority that it seems to resonate with so many of its natives. ] We’re a disease and it’s trying to repel us: the longer we’re here, the more time the First Order has to track us here and drag Hapes into it.
terrible people, the both of us
He still can't determine whether or not what he'd dreamt was something premonitory or just a run of the mill nightmare, but there's a bad taste in the back of his mouth that he can't shake just as much as he can't shake the cold tingle that starts at the back of his neck and wanders the pathways provided by his nervous system, arcing little sparks of electricity over his arms and legs, down his back, making his hair stand on end. It intensifies when he feels Rey reach out despite her accusations and scolding, and he surges into her point of view with alarming ease, so much so that Kylo has to catch himself with his own balance as he hurries through a separate hangar and down a joining hallway.
The image that Rey sees superimposes itself onto what he sees directly in front of him, affording him some strange double-exposure that he's experienced before but still finds strange all the same. Her perception of the unease, the taint spreading like a black fume, wanders across their connection, and Kylo feels it too, filling him up to the brim until he can't determine what he's feeling and what she's feeling and who's feeling more of it. Her words leave his mouth dry, just as he steps into the same area that she occupies, surrounded by Hapans who turn to look at him as he passes, alternating between leveling heavy, dark stares toward their wayward outsiders - the crowd broken up by Resistance colors and normal faces as opposed to the glittering impossibility of so much beauty on one planet alone - and Organa's approaching ship. )
Can you reach out to Skywalker? He could relay the information. ( There is also the off chance that Kylo could do the same with Organa directly, but he isn't sure how her sensitivity, her ability, stacks up when the Force is diluted through so many physical beings. His link to Rey is the one connection that doesn't waver, and he uses it to draw himself to her through the crowd. ) Incoming. ( It's a warning before his hand connects with her elbow, a brief touch that doesn't linger and serves more the purpose of alerting her to his presence. Still, he doesn't switch to verbal communication in the interest of maintaining privacy and the upper-hand. ) We need to get out of here.
( We, us, them, he has to admit, as much as he tries to deny it. Every moment they spend on this planet is another moment they have lost somewhere down the line. He can sense that now, standing next to Rey with his lightsaber heavy against his thigh. )
no subject
She turns her attention up towards him, considering the harsh lines of his face and the harsher expression he wears, alert and ready for a fight—perhaps even hoping for one—but her attention is quickly seized instead by the visible lightsaber at his hip. Rey tilts her head to the side, an accusation on her lips, but it never makes it into anything clearly verbal, just the transferred feeling that pours freely from her mind to his while he continues telepathic communication. ]
I can try. There's the distance to consider, and whether or not he'll allow me to. [ The distance has never been a problem from Rey's mind to Kylo Ren's, and it as that fact that led her to test it with others, with Luke, and find it was more difficult. Not impossible, but when compared to something that comes so naturally, anything else feels like an uphill climb.
All the same, she throws her awareness outward, reaching through the Force for the connections she has within the ship. It's imprecise and ill-practiced, a sloppy grab compared to the smooth transition she makes into Kylo's mind every time, and the net she throws seems to rattle around aimlessly within the confines of the ship a moment. ]
We can't leave until we've warned the General. [ She hopes he knows that, but she doesn't believe him to be considering it when he says that they have to evacuate. It's more important to send the General packing than themselves: they can fight their way out. General Organa is crashing into a trap that will only get worse as time wears on. In all likelihood, the First Order could already be on their way. ] Turn back…
[ He gets just as much of it as Luke does; in fact, she can't even be positive that Luke has opened himself up to her enough to get a read on it, but she has to assume that he's feeling out the Force just as she is, equally aware of the danger they're plummeting into and how much more significant it is than the dangers that have pervaded their fight against the First Order. ]
no subject
Rather, it's the realization that he had personally made assumptions about the nature of their dynamic and they had turned out to be wrong. Dimly, he wonders if it has something to do with Skywalker's perception of Rey's bond with his less than stalwart nephew or if it's something a little more benign, but there's not a great deal of time to consider basic semantics when they are in the middle of a throng that doesn't want them here in the first place. Rey doesn't seem bothered by her comments, at least, if her attempts to reach outward and glance the interwoven fabric of the ship and its occupants through the Force is anything to go by. Kylo can feel and hear her in his own thoughts, the long sweep of her arm as she stretches to make contact catching him in the trajectory.
He, too, notices the misplaced nature of some of the footholds that she seeks out, the bumps and divots in her connection that don't occur or appear when they cast out for one another, a seamless transition between one mind and the next. Feeling her scrabble for purchase in this way when he's able to so easily compare it to the distinct lack of difficulty that the both of them have when speaking to one another as they have been allows Kylo some greater amount of perspective, and it leaves him feeling a little buzzed in the wake of that understanding. This may be more serious than either of them are prepared for.
Rey's reach is long but grasping, a fist opening and closing around an extended hand. Skywalker is powerful beyond Kylo's knowledge of the word, as much as it kills him to admit it, and is likely to have felt the anticipatory brush of something waiting, lurking, preparing for the General's command ship to touch down, but he's not infallible. Kylo, of all people, knows that much. For what feels like a long time there is no response, and all around them the crowd seems to shift and breathe as one, low murmurs and tinkling laughter that doesn't sit right with the atmosphere. Kylo still can't shake the feeling that there is something hiding and watching in the shadows, and he casts out his own net, feeling for something that he can't be sure of, operating with the sudden thought that if Snoke is keen on either their whereabouts or their intentions, he could very well be throwing up smoke and mirrors to prevent his own intentions from being realized.
Ash coats the back of his mouth when Rey doesn't have an answer quick enough for his liking, and something that tastes a great deal like anxious trepidation claws down his throat. He has felt it before, more than once, and knows that despite his endeavors, it won't go away until he has exhausted the available resources, which means doing something he is not altogether prepared to do. )
General. ( Organa's presence, as Solo's had the moment that he touched down on Starkiller, burns like a supernova with her shuttle's approach. It wipes out and obscures everything around her and curls reality with the heat of it. He would shut Rey out, turn her away, but it requires more energy and focus than he is willing to spare at the moment, and as such she is afforded a front row seat as he attempts to bolster the strength of their connection with the two older members of this ragtag bundle of Force-sensitive nerves. ) You're walking into a trap.
no subject
Perhaps it reflects poorly on Rey that she had expected him to dismiss her safety entirely, perhaps not, but it reflects something on Kylo Ren that even though he'd been able to run his father through, he'd buckled under the threat of harm coming to his mother and reached out for her with barely a moment's pause. Just as speechlessness frayed her response in the interrogation room at the indisputable realization that he was not some grotesque monster behind that mask, Rey stands in awe that he does not stand by now, for it means confronting the man that he is and not the beast she has imagined him as.
Strangely, it does not humble her, but instead offers a measure of reassurance that she has not made some terrible mistake in dragging him back from the brink of eternal night by the ear.
They feel the effects of Kylo's more concentrated missive in tandem, a flicker of energy pulsing around the hangar, then the shuttle above slows its approach. Seconds turn to minutes, and Resistance officers make their way out of the cabins of their various shaped and sized ships, a mutter spreading through the hangar and finally reaching their ears that Organa has issued an evacuation order.
Rey's hand flies immediately to Kylo's arm to turn him back to the Falcon. ] Now. Let's hope Chewbacca's finished the repairs to the shields.
[ In the hurry, bordering on a run for Rey whose stocky legs try to cover more ground than they can in mere level haste, to the ship, they break through a number of clusters of Resistance fighters, none of whom mention the rally point. Orders, in all likelihood, which would concern Rey if she had any intention of reuniting with the Resistance as it stands.
Rather, Kylo Ren is privy to a hundred unsatisfactory scenarios in which she tries to encourage Chewbacca onto another Resistance vessel to protect him from the inevitability of their tailing party as well, for she can't help but imagine their role in this. The tracker in Kylo Ren's belt, however scrambled. The Knights of Ren pursuing the traitor to deal with them. The safest place for Chewie is far away from them, just like the best way for them to protect Luke and Leia, Finn and Poe, is to go very, very far away. But she can't articulate it, telepathically or otherwise, in any meaningful way even as she breezes through portal doors that hiss as they open the path to the hangar where the Falcon waits.
Kylo stretched himself to the seemingly impossible to protect Leia Organa today. Rey owes it to her to find a way to do the same. ]
no subject
He could claim easily that Organa's destruction at the hands of the First Order through whatever channel - Hapans or otherwise - also assured his own mutually premature ending and let it live and die as that, but Kylo knows without having to examine it why he had done what he had done in standing next to Rey on the bay floor and reaching out alongside her. It isn't a fact that he's ready or willing to examine, and as such he falls back into the routine they have established over he last pocketful of hours and days of running with minds linked like arms, a chain that vibrates between them and melds into something so perfectly crafted that he at times can't tell who is thinking or saying what, who encourages the other through this throng or around this corner, who more acutely senses the encroaching darkness and lets it bleed into the other.
Guilt doesn't lance into him as Rey hurls scenarios at the walls of her own mind, but like the busted heating unit in the ship's interior, Kylo understands that he is more than partially responsible for the current state of affairs, even if Rey's implicit involvement can't be denied as well. She was the hand in the dark that drew him back into a twilight field, and now her task falls to seeing the both of them cross that field soundly to the other side, to whatever waits there for them. Still, her deliberation slams into the walls of his own mind, his own thoughts, until Kylo is inadvertently trying to come up with a plan of attack that doesn't involve an outright attack. The ship is in their line of sight before he says anything operating under the guise of trying to be helpful. )
I could knock him out and stow him on a Resistance ship.
( That, he knows, is absolutely sure not to be seen as a helpful suggestion, but it seems a more tolerable method of approach over talking to the Wookiee at all. Still, it's going to fall to Rey to convince him: if Kylo tried in any capacity, it's likely Chewbacca might insist on staying aboard just to watch him. Kylo knows, however, that Rey's intuition regarding her co-pilot's - and the rest of the Resistance, for that matter - safety is not wrong. Something is coming, and it's coming for him, for them. Their chances of survival are better apart than they are together, in this case. )
no subject
You can’t come with us. [ The assessment comes out abrupt and unfeeling. Chewie moves slow, like he’s expecting her to withdraw it sometime between when he begins to turn around and when he finishes. She doesn’t, but instead launches into further justification. ] I know how you feel about him being here and who’s coming after us: I won’t let you risk your life for someone you can’t even stand to be in the same room with.
[ The answer in Shyriiwook sounds particularly indignant, and the easiest words to catch (inasmuch as the language can be parsed out into specific words in Basic and not concepts and more complexly intertwined sentiments) pertain to not being left like a pet during a move. Even without a Force bond, the heat of Rey’s reactive and defensive anger ripples in such a strong pulse that it is impossible to miss or ignore; with one, it’s a short-lived tidal wave that arrests her reason. ]
Oh don’t be so defensive! You know that’s not what this is. You need to be with the Resistance, with Leia. This has nothing to do with them—or her. [ Rey softens, approaching him with an outstretched had that settles in stark contrast against a bulky furred arm. ] And we both know where he’d want you to be. Someone needs to have her back, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else with Finn’s either.
[ The howl that follows is softer, a reluctant admission that Finn needs looking after, that Han Solo would not hesitate to cling to Leia’s side and leave Luke to look after Jedi business himself. ]
They’ll be disembarking soon. General’s orders. If you’re going, you’d better go now.
[ As goodbyes go, it’s lackluster and strained, neither having the time for anything properly emotional when Rey is stubbornly digging her heels in to get Chewbacca to leave at all. But it does its job, and Chewbacca moves past her with lumbering steps that tremor the metal plating of the ground beneath them. Rey lowers her head as he passes, not looking back at him once his paw has clapped on her shoulder and dropped away for she can’t stand to watch him go, leaving her adrift and alone.
Well. Not quite alone. Circumstances as they are, she’d almost prefer that. A deep breath steadies her and she lifts her chin, preparing herself to face the inevitability of the snapped conversation that waits with Kylo Ren, her de-facto co-pilot. ]
no subject
When a sufficient amount of time has passed for her to have located her co-pilot, Kylo propels himself forward, pausing for a minute in the entrance to cast his senses out, determine the location of his two wayward companions, and then head in the opposite direction. This plan of attack leads him to the hold, where the majority of his possessions are still piled haphazardly. It doesn't take long, but he replaces the ribbed armor over his flight suit, works his gloves back down over his hands and the gauze that he sports, despite the holes made by the burns scored, and pulls his tunic on over his head. He's more Kylo Ren than he has been in the last handful of hours spent disrobed as he has been, but lacking the mask he knows that he's still less intimidating or frightening or commanding than he would be otherwise.
Rey's burns of anger catches his attention, and it isn't something realized as a result of their connection but for the loudness of it, the sheer volume. Even if they weren't dialed into one another as they are, Kylo knows that he would sense it, and for as curious as he is to know the root of it, he doesn't go searching. Time is of the essence, with the ordered retreat in mind, and they don't have the luxury of time to waste on petty arguments generated as a result of his momentary nosiness. It quiets down in a moment anyway, still simmering like hot embers but less intense than the blue burst of flame that had erupted and fanned outward like an engine firing. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and a hot stone low in his gut turn over.
Kylo collects the location probe, waits until he hears Chewbacca's loud footsteps on the metal floor, and then heads in Rey's direction. He and the Wookiee cross paths briefly in the corridor leading down the cargo ramp, and there is a look exchanged that Kylo, at one time, may have been able to read for all its complexities and implications. All the private reservations that Chewbacca has, his fears and anxieties, bound up in the painful rip associated with leaving this girl that he has grown so fond of behind, alone with this boy he used to be so fond of who has become this monster, this murderer, manifest in a single sound that borders on a whine but ends with a growl. A threat. Kylo doesn't need the translation, can see it written all over Chewbacca's face and in the set of his very large shoulders.
Kylo raises his chin, a challenge, but says nothing. After another moment locked like this, Chewbacca descends down the ramp, his bowcaster catching the docking bay's lamplight and glinting in a final reminder. Kylo doesn't watch him go, turns immediately to continue in his path down the corridor to find Rey, chin held aloft and eyes bright but steely. )
Looks like you managed to convince him without resorting to unconsciousness. ( There's neither kindness or malice in his tone. She's done the right thing in eliminating the number of people that stand between them and the encroaching storm. Kylo holds out the location sensor in his palm, a momentarily dead and deactivated piece of equipment. ) I'm going to scramble the coordinates once we've left Hapes air space. I can ping the signal off of a few satellites in different star systems, hopefully confuse any tracking sensors if we're not immediately pursued by First Order pilots. If something really is coming, it might buy us some time to regroup while the Resistance scrambles to get away. But -
( It's hardly a surefire means of tracking them, but then Kylo very much doubts that Snoke needs something as trivial as a location sensor in order to find him, find them. )
Flying out of here is going to divert some of the attention away from the Resistance, but the Knights will come, eventually, and they will come for us, for me, not the general. Nothing can change that. Will you be ready?
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Only after she's prompted for reply does Rey turn around, a somber resolve schooling her expression into something full of hard, dark lines. Her eyes lift and fix on Kylo for a moment. ] I hope so. Otherwise, we'll be making a terrible mistake to divert our course from the Resistance's.
[ Then, breezily, she moves past him without taking the sensor. ]
I'm going to guess that you understand the basics of how the Falcon works.
[ She carries on as if she expects that he'll have followed her, not missing a beat before launching into the necessity of their escape and distraction. ]
I'll need you to operate the gunner seat and help me bring us in and out of hyperspace. Other than that, I should be able to manage.
[ The assumed state of being is Rey able to handle everything herself, so she only wastes her breath on the humbling exceptions as she crosses the threshold to the cockpit and begins to fire the engines, adjusting the dial to funnel some of the energy towards the hyperdrive to get it primed.
She is cutting her parachute and free-falling from the moment she feels Chewie fade to a mere blip on her radar, and all Rey can keep herself afloat with is the assurance that she's doing the right thing, covered with a heaping helping of busy-work to keep her occupied and blinded to the difficulty that she faces by relieving herself of the attachments she's made without so much as a goodbye. Luke must be terrified. She thinks of the hard-fought battles to try and persuade him to instruct her, of the distant sadness in his gaze when he thought of how he'd failed his last students, of the war that waged in him, and she hopes he'll know what she is doing here.
Charts light up the front window before her, arcing blue lines connecting to nearby planets while Rey cycles through their options. Finally, it settles on the nearest planet hovering at the edge of the Outer Rim from where they are: Mandalore. Far enough to steer them clear, decidedly on a planet that the Resistance would not attempt to take, and not the sort of planet she'd beat herself up about being caught in their crossfire. ]
Buckle in.
/gets 100% distracted rewatching tfa again
Simplifying it boils it down to a baser level, and it allows him to suspend the outlying thoughts orbiting his consciousness like satellites to the deeper hollows of space. Closing the location sensor in a fist, Kylo follows Rey down the corridor, not bothering to arrest himself mid-step as he crosses the threshold into the cockpit, hot on her heels. )
I was taught to fly it when I was a child. Of course I understand the basics.
( There is no attachment in his tone, no bitterness or resentment or desire for times long gone, dead and buried. This ship is hers, and he knows and accepts that. What Kylo says he says only as a means of response, not intended to elicit a response, and as such he crowds the space that she occupies in bringing up the navigational charts, letting his eyes scan the programmed fight paths and distant options that will lead them away from the Hapes Cluster and the Resistance. Their eyes close on Mandalore at the same time, and he's less than thrilled at the prospect of heading toward the Outer Rim after having weaved the illusion of their location for the Supreme Leader on their way to Roche space, but Snoke is likely to know by now that Kylo has lied to him. All bets are off at this point. They might as well be traveling through the Unknown Regions or Wild Space for all the benefit preconceived notions will afford them.
Kylo straightens up and crosses his arms, staring at the navigational readouts. Staring at Mandalore. Ji, his second, is Mandalorian by birth, though she considers the Knights and its infrastructure her home as opposed to that particular world. He can't decide whether or not she would see it as poetic justice to track them there or avoid the planet and its system as a matter of pride. It isn't Ji who's been haunting his nightmares, though. It's Dryx, and it's Dryx who clouds his perceptions now, who pushes Chewbacca and Organa and Skywalker and all the rest of them to the back of his mind. It doesn't matter where they go, as long as they leave.
After a moment's hesitation, he slides into the seat next to her as prompted. It is covered in hair, but the perspective it offers is not unfamiliar, and Kylo buckles in as instructed, prepared to leap up at a moment's notice to make for the gunner seat. )
You should know - ( He begins, in the interest of being forthcoming following the disaster that was his revelation regarding the location sensor, stowed now in a pocket. ) - one of the Knights of Ren was born on Mandalore. I have absolutely no reason to believe that she would begin a search there, and I think it's a safe bet as far as getting far away from the Resistance and the Hapes Cluster is concerned, but I thought it might be worth it for you to be aware, in the interest of being honest. ( He sits ramrod straight in the seat save for the slight bend in his spine as he leans forward, poised over the controls, running the gamut of what he remembers from time spent in this chair as a boy and what he's learned of piloting during his time spent under the First Order. ) Ready when you are.
Waits for the DVD like Fry's dog. So close. And so close to high res icons
But that is not what keeps her silent following his admission; instead, it is the deliberate weighing of their options, considering the benefits and drawbacks of potentially meeting this Knight on her own territory. Surely she would have a better understanding of the terrain, be able to track them more quickly, but at this point, the goal is not merely to evade—they need to confront, and if they cannot convert, they need need to kill.
That’s a bucket of cold water on her head, tightening her grip on the yoke. ]
Good. [ That final decision does not come without tension, the muscles of her jaw rippling with flexion; if they have hope of converting rather than killing, her home planet is likely the place to do it. Maybe it will remind her of who she was before she was hollowed out by Snoke. Maybe it will leave her feeling on the defensive, having them crash through her personal history so recklessly. Or maybe it’ll just end this sooner.
Switches flip and the engines begin their hum, leading Rey to turn and nod her head to Kylo for them to, in tandem, ease the ship forward and lift off from the hangar. Lights strobe as they shudder towards the doors, and Rey only realizes as they begin to pass that the hangar is closing. The Millennium Falcon cuts cleanly through and into the glimmering daylight of Hapan airspace, but behind them, steel blast doors continue to draw shut as if to trap the Resistance within.
Rey sits up straighter in a panic, eyes wide, tense all over, the possibility of turning back on the tip of her tongue as she strains to help the people she had a moment ago planned to abandon. She cannot, on an emotional level, fathom the Queen-Mother’s intentions in keeping them there, though she presumes it’s to curry favor with the First Order to help them remain apart from the rest of the galaxy’s problems as it continues to sweep through. Betrayal screams through her, wracking her, demanding that she wheel the ship around and dive back in, but instead her hands hold steady, knuckles white, while tears well in her eyes.
It will be too long before she knows what has become of Finn, of Poe, of Chewbacca, but the General’s shuttle breaks atmo to return to the greater Resistance fleet above. The monolith of the cause will survive, even if her friends do not, and she needs to find a way to reconcile that ache in her chest. ]
ugh i want it so bad just for the iconnnnssss whyyyyy isn't it april 5th
Rey, though, is a different story.
Her pain is his own in the broadest sense only. He spares a glance back at the planet as they hurtle toward black space, glancing the General's ship as it rockets away from Hapes and into infinite possibility beyond. The acute sense of betrayal and abandonment that slices through Rey's consciousness, her beating, bleeding heart, punches him in the chest as a result of both their proximity to one another and their link. He tries to shake it loose, focusing on the controls and tracking lights that wink to life within the cockpit, running through the catalog of information that he has not accessed regarding this ship in a very, very long time. But when the sensation borders on achieving real volume within the dome of his skull, Kylo turns to look at her out of the corner of his eye and doesn't miss the shining brightness washing out the color of her eyes.
He doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing at first, flipping a switch that signals an unnecessary readout - more of the ship complaining about the state of the heating unit, a panel that needs closed somewhere but poses no immediate danger or risk - and trying to focus the bulk of his thought that isn't directed toward the ship and their escape on the possibility of encountering one of the Knights on Mandalore. What it would mean in terms of their overall chances, he can't be sure, just as he can't be sure that they will even meet Ji or Dryx or any of the others, although he knows that he'll feel it when they're about to. The deep pulse of Rey's wound through the Force prevents him from focusing completely, though, and so after a moment he glances over at her again, obviously privy to her conflict but operating as if he hasn't seen the shine of her eyes and the tears that gather there, however briefly. He's always preferred it when people pretend not to notice, himself. )
Keeping yourself alive and free is doing them more of a service than you would be able to do had you remained on Hapes.
( He could offer her some platitude, some made up inside knowledge about the First Order or Hapan customs, but they would be lies, and Kylo doesn't have any desire to start lying to her now. She would know he was making it up, besides, and he's never been particularly well-versed in feigning sympathy or compassion; it's either present, or it isn't. )
2 more weeks so close
She can't help but think how he has no idea what she is feeling, the difficulty of it, because it's too foreign to him to care about someone else's safety more than she cares about herself. When she was on Jakku, her survival was all she had, but that's changed now, and it's worth a great deal less to her than Finn's, than Chewie's. ]
Don't. [ It's perhaps unfair to cut him off so abruptly, to ignore the clear fact that he'd evaded any jeering answer to her apparent tears, but that doesn't stop Rey from doing it. She doesn't want his hand to be the one on her shoulder, figuratively or otherwise. Rather than dwell, she pulls the yoke back and the engines accelerate until the ship is rattling with the force of breaking the atmosphere, a clean fade into the peaceful abyss of space.
Regardless of who she's doing service to, she follows through, and they clear the planet and leave the trickling pattern of Resistance ships parting at another angle, a thin belt of grey splotches on the inky cloak of space. She raises her arm then and wipes a tear that leaks down her cheek away, stubborn enough to be mad at it for daring to fall rather than examining the sentiment that led to it. She can't afford to be plagued with it right now.
She sets immediately about charting the course through hyperspace around debris, letting the projected potentialities distract her from her own feelings with the familiar coolness of soft blue light. She locks it in, promising them an arrival at Mandalore within half a day. Kylo warrants only a presumptive nod from him as she reaches for the hyperdrive, waiting for him to join her in engaging it so that the stars can streak into white lines down the front window of the ship, and peel away the last remnants of Hapes' hold. ]
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The ship vibrates as it carries them further into space, gradually breaking free of Hapes' gravity well and leaving the swirling mess of the planet and its inhabitants behind. He's glad to be rid of it, glad in a way to have the eyes of the Resistance off of his back, and as such takes a moment to draw a deep breath in through his nose, letting it slowly out the way that it came. His head clears somewhat, disengaging from the fog of adrenaline and the haze that his fitful, exhaustive time spent asleep had left over his mind. Kylo feels along his own nerve endings where the location sensor digs into his hip, wedged underneath the weight of his saber - two comforting yet unpleasant reminders of the storm that waits for them on the horizon - and tries to relax despite the knots winding themselves together out of muscle and skin, still on pins and needles while on this freighter.
Rey charts their path through hyperspace, and he watches her do it with some amount of interest, refreshing himself on protocol that he hasn't been privy to for well over twenty years. It isn't entirely different from his own Upsilon-class shuttle, but then he's not routinely the one piloting it. Despite knowing what he's doing innately, it doesn't hurt to pay attention, the same way in which he had paid attention when Rey was finishing repairs on the heating unit. He's ready when she prompts him, and he assists her in easing the YT-model into hyperspace, running through recycled steps as they coax the hyperdrive out of stasis and into active duty. It is, possibly, the only thing they have ever done together without arguing over it first, and as such he stays in the co-pilot seat until black becomes white becomes a swirling screen of bending time and space all around them.
Without saying a word, he fishes the location sensor out of his pocket and keys it into the ship's computer, pulling up a technical readout of the sensor's specs and data on one of the small screens that decorates the cockpit. The sensor reads offline as he punches in commands and coordinates, splicing in several relay points that are sure to confuse the First Order and possibly a few of the more technologically lacking Knights, if they're lucky, if it doesn't throw them off their trail entirely. Once it's done, Kylo unbuckles his belt and climbs to his feet. The back of his clothing is littered with light and dark brown hair, but he only shows Rey his profile, disengaging the location probe from the nav computer and holding it in his palm. )
The signal is set to beam back to Hapes. ( His tone is neutral, and he doesn't look at her. He hadn't missed the pass of her hand over her face as she'd wiped away any and all evidence that she'd been crying. Another time and he might have exploited it. Now is not that time, and all he feels is uncomfortable for having glimpsed it. ) Then bounce back to Corellia before veering up into Kuat for a short while - long enough to refuel, I suppose - and then hurtle down toward Nar Shaddaa, where the signal will die. The First Order might be unwilling to get involved immediately with the Hutts, so it could buy you some time. ( He tosses the sensor to her, tugging restlessly on his gloves. She can plug the thing back into the computer and check to see if he's lying, if she wants. ) You can choose when to activate, though I wouldn't dally if I were you.
( With that he strides from the cockpit, remembering to duck on the way out. )
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She closes her fist around the sensor, debates crushing it and letting the Knights find them sooner to get it over with, but survivalism is built too deep into the core of her being to allow her fist to clench. Impotent for the strength of her own will to survive as long as possible, she lets her head tip back against the seat as she peers out at the emptiness of hyperspace unfurling before her.
Shutting her eyes affords her a sense of clarity, a calm that settles over her, and she lets herself focus on the movements of the Force as they whip through it. Absently, she wonders if the nature of a hyperdrive pierces the veil of the Force as it does the fabric of space; would it be damaged? All curiosity quiets the moment she decides to reach out for Finn, the clumsy blanket of her awareness grasping across the galaxy with such cloying desperation that she's sure to find some trace of him, but she turns up empty, and it only serves to sink her deeper into sorrow by meters.
Reality rushes back. She opens her hand and stares down into it, activating the sensor and leaving it on the copilot seat to be forgotten. If Kylo Ren would damn them both, she decides, let him.
As much as she doesn't want to chase him, there's only so much space in the ship, and isolation won't give her any answers or distract her from her demons. When she appears to him again, she has composed herself, a stern and steady look firmly set on her face but without the accompanying confidence and certainty. Regardless of what she has gathered to regain the impression of ease, the misstep of Hapes has shaken her.
She hovers a moment, warring with herself over whether or not she should even bring it up again by attempting justifications for her feelings and the presentation of them, if she needs to qualify her vulnerability before Kylo Ren. Resolving against it, she redirects. ]
They're already hunting us, aren't they? That's why I could feel you stirring in your sleep. [ Terming what he had done sleep seems generous, but she won't insult him by dragging his unpleasantries out into the open air when he'd done her the courtesy of leaving her tears unaddressed. ] You can sense them.
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Giving her the authority and ability to choose to determine the usefulness of the location sensor doesn't absolve him of the reality of what happens once they drop out of hyperspace and into Mandalorian territory, nor does it act as an adequate peace offering to ease them through the strain they are sure to feel as a result of spending the next however-many-cycles in the presence of only each other. He knows that. He isn't even sure that he wants to create the illusion that what he's doing is extending a hand toward her in a gesture of good faith, knowing that she is just as likely to slap it away as she is to draw it toward her only in the interest of sinking her teeth in. Kylo can admire that about her, for as frustrating as he finds it, and in staring down at the dull contents of the holo, he's able to let that understanding wash over him for the first time, really, in its entirety since before they landed on Hapes.
He's alone in the hold and so there's no harm in pausing for just one second to stop and consider the gravity of what it is he's done, but in peeling back that curtain to peer behind it, a surge of bile rises sharply in the back of his throat and burns like he's swallowed acid. Kylo's eyes water from staring too long without blinking at the bright glow of the holopad, and he names the sensation clawing its way up his esophagus for what it is. Fear. Adrenaline and momentum have caught him up so completely that he's not had time to adequately label it, but just as Rey grapples with the weight of what she's done in abandoning the people that she loves to a fate she can't know, Kylo sits and lets the gravity of his actions and choices burn an ulcer in his gut.
Fortunately, he isn't alone in the hold for long, as he feels Rey hovering just outside the doorway even without the use of the Force telling him that she's there. He looks up at her when she speaks, wondering at the nature and intent of her question but not pressing it, and then glances back down at the very interesting content of nothing on the holo in his lap before responding. )
I believe so, yes. ( He shifts, still uncomfortable with the knowledge that she - that they - are able to sense each other even in this way. Not definitive images or concepts but sensations and feelings. Despite how frequently they have been in each other's minds, it still leaves him feeling exposed, but Kylo knows that it can be a blessing rather than a hindrance if they continue utilizing it correctly. ) I don't know where they are right now or what they're doing, but even if I couldn't sense something from them, I would still be a fool to think that they weren't coming. Snoke will have had enough time to call them together. He will have figured out the deception that we presented him with when we left Corellia, especially as I've not made a conscious effort or decision to let him in. Mandalore will serve as a decent detour, and the location sensor will give them pause, but neither will suffice as a diversion for long. They'll find us.
( Kylo studies her a moment, the set of her jaw and the angles of her face, the deep well that opens and gapes behind the brightness of her eyes, still lined red but a measure more composed than when he'd left her in the cockpit. He casts out, not toward her but backward, cycling through the bulk of their interactions and deciding on one in particular that draws his interest just as much now as it had then, and he sits up and sets the holo down next to him on the old, uncomfortable cushion. )
You said you'd seen them before, through the Force. You said that it was raining. ( He pauses long enough to let that sink into his own bones, reconciling it with what he has been able to retain from the nightmare he experienced on Hapes. ) What exactly did you see?
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He incites the memory of the vision that flooded her when she touched Luke's lightsaber without fully understanding the turmoil that comes with it. Then, she hadn't been sure if what she saw was a dream or a memory, a vision of the past or the future, but now she feels like she's better able to sift through. Some of it was her history, some Luke's, and some of it was their shared future together, where the Force guided their paths to converge in one. ]
I already told you. [ That isn't quite true, not entirely. She lowers herself onto the bench beside him, adjacent and around the corner that it bends to around the dejarik board, affording the two of them a safe amount of buffer room. She folds her hands on top of the table, shoulders hunched, and weighs him with her gaze as if to determine if she trusts him with more than that, or if she has to hold it back.
When she examines the reason, she summons up that sense of uncertainty. If it is a vision of the future, with Kylo Ren standing with the Knights of Ren flanking him in the pouring rain, then it means that his presence on the side of the Resistance is temporary, a fleeting daydream. It leaves her to sift through what she can make of the cloaked Knight that he cut down while she crouched below, overwhelmed by the suddenness of the experience.
As much as she wants to dismiss her fears about him as unsupported nonsense, she can't stop thinking about the same nightmare vision that he questions her about now. ]
It was dark, and raining. You were there, and more than a half-dozen of them. I saw you run one of them through with your lightsaber from behind while he was coming towards me.
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I dreamt something similar on Hapes. ( Kylo can't determine whether or not he's using the word similar by the loosest definition possible or not. He's certainly not eight-years-old anymore - despite sometimes acting the part - and Rey had not even been a light in her parents' eyes by the time he was that old, but that's the problem with trying to determine nonsense from insight when it comes to the Force. Like shifting sand through a sieve in an attempt to find a pearl, most of the time what you shake out is just more sand. Regardless, Kylo screws his expression up in an effort to chase the tail end of what he remembers ) The rain, in the dark. All of them, as you've described it, to a certain extent.
( Even as the words come out of his mouth, it doesn't feel like it's the first time that he's regurgitated them in some fashion, just as meeting Rey for the first time hadn't felt like the first time. Whispers and tremors around that word - girl - a yawning and stretching of limbs in the dark void that only he and his master were meant to fill. He couldn't explain it then, and Kylo isn't sure were he prompted any further than she's indirectly prompting him that he would be able to explain it now. Thoughts and feelings. The Force. It all muddles together and washes away in a swirl of dark colors and smeared, bright light. )
I saw one of them approaching you, and then I was behind him, and then I wasn't anymore. I was down on the ground, and you were above me, reaching out your hand. ( Dark eyes chase the pattern on the dejarik board over to where Rey sits, and the realization that he could kill the remaining Knights just as easily as he could rejoin them swims vaguely to the surface of his thoughts, a lone bubble from down below. He feels suspended, hanging above an impact point far below what his eyes can track. They will try to kill him, he's sure, but what if they try to bring him back? Will he go? He couldn't, not without knowing that his own end would be imminent, not without undoing everything that he and Rey - that he - has worked to do, chosen to do. He swallows and inadvertently sinks down further into the sofa. ) Some of it felt like it might be true. Most of it just felt like a bad dream. That's the problem with reading things through the Force, sometimes. There's no way to be sure of what's true, what might be true, and what is just the result of some bad holo you watched once.
( But Rey had never used the word dream, and that's what marks the difference between them. Kylo can't decide if he thinks his own experience is the result of the bleeding of her mind into his or something else, something different, some warning about what's coming. After everything - even before everything - he likes to think that he still has no intention of killing her, that he certainly wouldn't allow anyone else to kill her, other than himself if it came down to it. Certainly not Dryx or any of the other Knights. What that says about him and his thoughts and opinions toward Rey as a whole is something he still isn't willing to examine at length, despite having a decent idea since she woke on Starkiller. Regardless of what he thinks, however, he's never been more sure that something is waiting for them, coming for them. It pulls at him and fills his mind not unlike the way in which his inevitable default to Snoke's guidance and leadership had. Unavoidable. )
I think it's safe to say, though, that Mandalore might be our last stop without incident, if it ends up being without incident at all.
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[ Stubborn and sure, Rey doesn't flinch as she defends herself against the accusation of uncertainty for the real, wracking fear of the vision was that she could feel that it was real, all of it. Right down to the far off voice whispering her name and urging her forward. The call it made was real, realer than anything she'd felt before that point, and its summons reified her departure from Jakku, from the life she'd known for so long. ]
It came to me when I touched Luke's lightsaber for the first time. I wasn't asleep or dreaming or anything like that: it was real. It will be real.
[ Acceptance of the verity comes with the unfortunate side effect of acknowledging that the haunting painting of Kylo Ren looming at the forefront of a squadron of Knights would be just as real, one day. For what purpose, she cannot guess, but Rey does not find herself in wistful anticipation.
Still. She can, and reluctantly does, agree with him on one thing: Mandalore will be the end of their relative peace, if it could ever be called that. They've moved so readily from one war zone to another, battle after battle, that she can hardly believe it qualifies, but the Knights of Ren make it more personal. There is no escaping, no hiding among an army of Resistance fighters to be part of a crashing wave: when the Knights of Ren come, they'll come for Kylo and Rey. ]
reads about mandalore forever do do dooooo
He tells himself that it involves her, too, more so than it does him, given what she's seen and the perspective in which she's seen it. It does little to assuage the inferiority that he feels, but it does enough to keep his voice from winding tightly around itself, allowing him to speak somewhat freely. As freely as he can when trying to determine the future of things and their involvement in them. )
You have a great deal of conviction about that for someone who's done what she's done in order to get the both of us here. ( But it sounds real. It sounds more real. Sitting here on his father's ship with the girl who split his face into unequal parts, who outshined him and resisted him and dragged herself through hell to quiet all the noise in his head, even if it ends up being only for a short time, whose thoughts and feelings have the ability to rattle around in his own skull without provocation, seems like it should be the fiction. His place at the head of the other Knights as Rey has seen it seems more realistic than his distinct lack of effort to turn her, to bring her back before Snoke and present her. Maybe he's playing a long con and doesn't even know it yet, although the likelihood of that being true seems about as possible as he and Chewbacca absconding to distant stars together. ) It almost seems to make more sense to kill me on Corellia to make sure this vision you've had doesn't come true than it does to take the risk and fly all the way to Mandalore. So - ( Kylo pauses, and asks the question before he actually even realizes that it's a thought that has occurred to him. ) - why?
( Why try at all, if this is the outcome? Why try at all, even if it isn't? Another time, another place, he would have taken a knee in front of Snoke and asked for guidance, for further training and tutelage. But there is no Snoke in his head to lead Kylo down a path that makes sense of it all. There is no one, just silence. )
Oops gives you homework. I should do that too probably because all I have rn is Boba Fett
The day Kylo Ren slayed Han Solo, Rey and Leia shared the loss of their loved one, and Rey mourned him as if he were her own. She could not mourn with Leia if she were the one to take the General’s son from her, and then she would suffer the loss of the only maternal warmth she’s ever felt. It’s selfish, surely, but in the empathic way that Rey manages best.
Then there’s the paralyzing responsibility of being the Jedi’s hope for balance, for resistance against the dark shadow that looms at the edge of the galaxy. The isolation of being Luke Skywalker’s only apprentice while he gives her insight into the Force in part and parcel, only offering what he believes she can manage and holding the rest back as leverage of some kind. Leaving Jakku should have meant leaving her loneliness behind, but it grows and stretches in the void in her chest that swells with each expanded understanding of what it means to be a Jedi. Abstinence from companionship, from connections, while maintaining the rich well of compassion within her asks a lot of a girl who is clumsily drunk on the sudden flood of affection that comes with breaking out of her hermitage.
The Jedi code asks her to offer compassion to Kylo Ren rather than the point of her lightsaber, but that is even less valid than claiming Kylo Ren had spared her life out of the kindness of his heart on Takodana. She spared him because she fears being the only one, restricted by what Luke will offer her, carrying the weight of the Jedi code alone on her back and hoping to make the best of it.
The threat of being left adrift and alone is two-fold, then: the danger of losing the mother she’s never had to grief and blame on the heels of losing Han Solo, and the tremulous responsibility of being the sole carrier of the Jedi legacy. Both swirl together into a selfish, dark justification for the fact that Kylo Ren has been allowed to survive his father, and acknowledging that fact leaves Rey—not for the first time—wondering if she has made the right choice. ]
The first time I saw General Organa, we wept together. Even though she knew it to be true, could feel it in the pulse of the Force, she didn’t understand how Han Solo could be dead because she could still sense a light in her son, and she believed that it burned brighter than the darkness that Snoke had drowned him in.
[ Even with Kylo Ren sitting across from her, she speaks of Ben Solo as a lost boy, a forgotten memory of a third party that is far away from the dejarik board and the Millennium Falcon, for the light that Leia accounts for is not a light that Rey has seen firsthand, not a belief she can force onto him in the same way, even if she has no problem levying the name against him where appropriate, brandishing it as a weapon. ]
When I first saw that vision, I thought you were a nightmare, a haunting specter with an army at your back ready to cut me down. But like your mother, you showed me another possibility—on Yaga Minor, do you remember? [ She lifts her gaze, leans intently forward as the metal of the table sighs and settles below her weight. ] You and that cloaked figure were towering over me when you cut him down: I believe, when the time comes to destroy him, you’ll do it to protect me.
[ She has to believe that because the only other choice is to acknowledge that she’s made all the wrong choices, and the right one would have been to cost herself everything by killing him. ]
hahah me too, basically. boba fett is the whole planet right? it's fine
Rey. Sitting almost across from him now, sifting through her own emotions even as she presents her reasoning for her direction to him. Instinctively, Kylo knows that it's more than just the moral obligation that she feels toward his mother, more than just the civic duty she has as a new Jedi to expel whatever darkness has hooked talons into him and drag him - kicking and screaming, if need be - back toward the light, and for that reason he doesn't altogether understand her. Were their positions reversed, he would kill - but no, he can't even complete that thought without ultimately admitting that it's a bold faced lie. Because he does understand her, even without the bond. That knowledge in and of itself leaves him as conflicted as anything does, as much as her answer does, and he's forced to live with the tightening of his fist even as he brings it down to curl over the lip of the bench, rippling the old cushioning underneath the force of it. )
General Organa is misguided about many things at work in the galaxy, whether she's willing to admit it or not. ( Despite the resentment trying to claw its way out of his throat by way of his hand curled around the bench, it's a mostly internal sentiment that manifests in a way not dissimilar to his admission to Solo on the bridge: a recognition of who and what he has become in the wake of someone who believes that he's capable of better, who believes that he belongs. But there's no going back, and that's the fact that Solo and Organa could both never recognize. ) Organa thinks that her son will come back as she once knew him, but what she refuses to remember is that her son was never the boy she likes to pretend that he was. He was angry and afraid and weird and - ( Kylo's eyes skip over to where Rey sits, involuntarily drawn to her and her association with this one word. ) - alone.
( Of course his loneliness will never amount to what she has been forced to experience, but it still stands to reason that his own loneliness as a child was at least in part somewhat responsible for the ease with which he was drawn away by Snoke. But Kylo rushes to cover it, more at ease discussing the possibility of their future in each other's lives than he is with rehashing the very real past as seen through different sets of eyes. Kylo's own skip away from Rey's face and settle back on the checkered board between them, and he stretches his legs out long in front of them, so that they stick out on the other side of the table, out of his line of sight but probably visible to Rey if she looked. )
You managed to get one thing right in all of that, though. I have been quite the nightmare.
( He doesn't disagree with her, though, about the rest of it, about protecting her. Whether it's because he agrees with her or can't speak to the validity of her prediction as a whole, even Kylo himself can't determine. )
it is in fact shaped like his helmet
I thought you might say that.
[ Though she shakes her head, Rey doesn't discourage or undermine any of what he says. Just as she will not expect him to subscribe with a committed heart to the cause or to her inexplicable understanding of the vision as it stood, she will not ask him to become Ben Solo again. She never knew Ben Solo. The loss she feels is only secondary, distant and mitigated by the fact that sitting before her like this, Kylo Ren has a greater capacity to understand and relate to her than Ben Solo ever could. Kylo Ren is a product of loneliness and isolation, just as she is, even if he came to it by will.
All the same, the disgruntled twitch of her mouth joins with a turn of her gaze in an expression that reluctantly admits that she knows what she says sounds— ] You think I don't know how mad it sounds. But mark my word: you're going to spare my life, just as I've spared yours. If I had to guess, I'll bet it's for the same reasons, too.
[ Not the ones she has given voice to, admittedly, but the other, deeper and darker purpose, the gnawing self-possessed loneliness that spins and commands her, driving a need for affirmation and understanding. Long before she reached out for him, Kylo Ren was grasping with spindly leather fingers for her, and Rey reckons now that he merely recognized it sooner—though whether that was a luxury of his age, his training, or the fact that he wasn't the one being hunted, she cannot say. ]
hahahahah well now i'm just sad that's not true
anything can be true if you close your eyes and believe
i will just wizard of oz red shoes it into a reality
things i've learned about mandalore: everything is named variations of mandalore
they are a proud people full of proud mandalorian pride
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this is the worst tag i'm so sorry this weekend has been insanely busy and it's only saturday
NO WORRIES my life is a blur right now i'm so unreliable omg
MINE TOO it's fine it's fine. prayer circle for me and you. i hope you're surviving!!!!!
just barely./stares into the middle distance. why is the end of the semester so hard
i have never understood. i think making it to the end means things should be easier
finals week is finally here i can see the light
YOU ARE ALMOST THERE YOU CAN DO IT. also i apologize for short/crap tags i've been sick this week
i feel like the six days this tag took is enough of a "don't even worry about it"
and then i got pulled for jury duty this week so everything is a mess. I HOPE SCHOOL IS OVER
it is!!! also why can't civil service suit our schedules like "yes hello i'd like to volunteer"
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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well a month later i'm the worst rper in the land
that's a weird way to spell best ???
you are legitimately too kind
routine is suuuuuper good for mindset i'm both fatigued by school and glad it's back
now i'm back. from outer space. i just walked in here to find you with that look upon your face!
now that you're back in the atmospheeere drops of jupiter in your haiiir mixes pop lyrics nbd
this is fine it's just the remix duh
club mix ntz ntz ntz
hahah this semester is killing me. i'm sorry if this tag is garbage. december can't come fast enough
honestly sets all of 2016 on fire is it over yet