Ren Waugh-Solo (behindthemask) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2017-12-09 00:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, kylo ren / ben solo |
narrative; Kylo Ren
Who: Kylo Ren
When: Late Friday night.
Where: His room at the Solo apartments.
What: A lot of becoming and unbecoming and stuff.
Rating: Moderate, discussion of events in TFA.
Status: COMPLETE.
Kylo Ren was sitting on his bed, eyes closed to block out the distraction of the room around him. He knew he'd had to leave the Cottage; he hadn't wanted to risk snapping. He felt also that being in this apartment and getting to know his Grandmother had been for the good. But this room, looking so exactly like the one he'd had on the Finalizer, at times set up an incongruence he couldn't seem to rid himself of. Sometimes it was easier to just close his eyes, and recently closing his eyes had drifted into something more akin to meditation than even an elimination of distraction. Meditating had always taken a different feel with Snoke than it had with Luke. And even now, Kylo wasn't certain which feel was the most useful. With Luke it had always had a very Jedi feel - focus away from your emotions, empty yourself - and it had never really worked. Even had Kylo, or Ben, been able to focus away from emotions, emptying himself had usually felt like opening himself up to something darker. Snoke had always wanted him to hone in on those emotions, particularly those sparked by anger and bitterness. Focus there and he would find power there - and he had so much power. So much. Neither felt - true, for lack of a better word. Not now, and maybe neither ever really had. Kylo opened his eyes, his gaze following the smooth lines of what appeared to be the inside of a First Order Star Destroyer and for a moment the impulse was to draw back to Snoke's instructions. To dive into where was he angry and bitter, because he was, and to focus on that, hone it, use it. Forget any other emotion that might pull him away from the Dark Side, even if they were there. And they were. Joined with the bitterness he could direct towards Margo for her skepticism and mistrust forcing him out of the cottage, was something gentler - the recognition that Eliot would never be happy needing to choose between Margo or Kylo and Kylo deeply wanted Eliot to be happy. But with that knowledge that Eliot wouldn't be happy if he had to choose, there was jealousy that Kylo could easily reach out and grab. But the jealousy couldn't over-ride that desire that Eliot be happy which meant Kylo figuring out how to reconcile with Margo in some ways. Along with the shame - an emotion that could practically guarantee darkness - that his attempt had been rebuffed, was something else, something that felt far less stable - something that he couldn't tell if it would make him powerful or make him weak. He closed his eyes again. He wasn't trying to be what Snoke had wanted him to be. He was trying to be who he wanted to be. Even if Kylo Ren wasn't entirely certain what that person should look like. And in that not knowing there was something simpler about holding onto the bitterness. He was doing the best that he could. He hadn't harmed anyone here. Their rebuff was uncalled for. Nothing he'd done was about them personally, and for them to hold it against him was deeply unjust. And maybe he could have, if not for Leia and Eliot. Leia, in particular had not offered him justice. Instead she'd offered something different in its place. Leia was perhaps the one person in this town whose condemnation Kylo believed he deeply deserved. He'd killed her husband (his father). And he'd thought that all the offering that she'd given him, the continual reaching out to him, asking him to be a part of the wedding, all of those things - had come in the absence of being aware that she should hate him. To say that it had rocked his world when he'd realized she had known, and had known for a long time, and that when after all of it, she continued to want to spend time with him, would be to be an understatement. He didn't deserve any of that. She was not even the woman who had given birth to him, precisely. It would have been easy for her to mark him down as unsafe, and to avoid him completely. She hadn't. At times he could feel anger that she hadn't treated him how he deserved. But he seemed to be incapable of pulling on that well of anger for very long. It almost always turned inward into something that felt like wanting a second chance - maybe. And Eliot. Maybe that feeling couldn't have happened without Eliot. On some level, Kylo realized that when Eliot had befriended him on that damn cruise ship as they'd moved from place to place, that he'd been testing the realms of the friendship. When Kylo had told him about Han's death, he'd firmly expected Eliot to run. Patricide seemed like a rather unforgivable sin for most people -- perhaps it was illogical to assume that people would know this about him and consider him safe, but that was a truth he could only glance at out of the corner of his eye -- and yet Eliot hadn't rejected. Instead he had sought to understand why. Kylo opened his eyes and stared across the room where his lightsaber sat. The hilt looked like cold metal, but it held all the symbolism of having stepped away from his family and the life he'd trained for. The weapon had been drenched in blood and it had been born out of bitterness and anger and hatred. And he'd been proud of being able to make it on his own. He'd so nearly not managed it, and he'd had so little training on the subject, but still he had succeeded. It had come in handy when they'd been attacked in the fifties, but largely he had not used it since he arrived in Tumbleweed. Instead it seemed to sit as a monument to a moment that he could honestly admit to himself, however many months out from his arrival, that he regretted. If he could do that moment again... His gaze glanced to the list on the table that hadn't really been moved since it had arrived there the first of the month. The deepest wish he would never be bold enough to put to paper. There was no creature whose ability was magical enough to be able to undo it. And while he would undo it, there was perhaps some part of him that realized the regret, the things he had learned on the other side - he had needed those things. If he undid the act, would he keep that knowledge? He reached his hand up, pulling with the Force and the lightsaber easily flew across the room into his waiting hand, he switched the blade on in front of him, it's light filling the room with a deep red glow, the hum of it was comforting in its own way. He closed his eyes, turned it off, and held the weight of the hilt in his hand. It was solid, firm, and a reminder of that moment. A reminder too of the moment following it while with the blade in his chest, Han had reached out his hand and touched Kylo's cheek and he lifted his empty hand to his cheek to press away the moisture there. He'd been able to feel Han's longing, love, regret, hope - it had all swirled together in an emotional punch that Kylo had been unable to fully rid himself of. It should have been easy to reject it. He pulled in a sharp breath and looked down at the weapon in his hand. The idea he was turning over in his mind now had occurred to him earlier as he'd been thinking about presents. It had seemed right. And he'd also fought about the necessity of it. He'd come up with a hundred reasons why not. He needed the lightsaber. He had earned the right to carry it. He'd built it himself. It was part of him (these were admittedly also reasons why, in their own way). If they were in a situation like the island, or like the past Tumbleweed where they needed to fight, he needed it. He could justify not doing it. But more and more they struck him as just that - justifications. His gaze on the hilt, he reached into the Force feeling all of the pieces and components that worked together to make up a working lightsaber. He had made it once, he could unmake it now. The pieces where things could be pulled apart, the crystal inside at the core of it, they could all be felt in the Force, and Kylo Ren leaned into them now, releasing the crossguard and the handle from each other, the electronic components separated out, and finally the crystal was left and as he held the rest of the saber in the force he reached out to take the crystal in his hand. It was cracked and he could see that. It had happened when he'd made the blade in the first place, something that likely shouldn't have happened, but it wasn't as if Luke had shown him how to do it. He'd been working on his own from bits and pieces of information and he had been ready if Luke would simply have trusted him. If he'd had real instruction it wouldn't have cracked. He frowned slightly, closing his hand around the red crystal, and returning the hilt to its form without the crystal that allowed it to operate. As he finished that task, he let the hilt drop onto the bed in front of him where it landed with a thumb against the dark duvet. Kylo let his breath out and he opened his hand to stare at the crystal again. Kylo had given Eliot his deepest regret. It had been a foolish, impossibly reckless move, but somehow it had turned into the best thing he'd ever done. Unexpectedly, impossibly, Eliot had taken that regret and had simply held onto it. And here in his hand was the physical reminder of that same regret, a deep, cracked, blood-red, that felt all too symbolic of who he had been. A wisp of a conversation from Eliot strayed across his thoughts: We only begin to have a grasp when we look back and realize we weren't who we thought we were because we always change. Kylo unfolded his legs and slid off the edge of the platform bed, drawing the saber hilt into his other hand with the Force. The crystal went into his pocket. The hilt went into the drawer at the small stand on the edge of his bed. He pushed the drawer shut on the hilt with a certainty that, decision having been made, felt unshakeable. If only such certainty could last. |