Heat.
It was darkness and anger and fire that threatened to consume drug down into despair and into fear thicker than any forest, more cutting than any thicket, and threatening to trap him within it.
Pain.
An ache twice as large as anything he'd felt recently.
With a vast loneliness stretching out into darkness, as his fingers closed around dice that faded as if they'd never been, like a whisper of a dream of a life he'd maybe once been promised. If there was hope there it was lost in the shadows. There was a planet, his troops - his - a galaxy waiting for his command, and yet it was all cloaked in shadows, pinpoints of presence from Hux, from Rey - Rey.
He looked up at he saw her staring at him, as she'd stared at him dozens of times, and it was this moment Kylo realized that he was no longer dreaming. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, the nap he'd been taking gone, and the connection still there.
It occurred to him a heartbeat later that he'd been granted memories, whatever that meant. A life lived that he hadn't exactly lived, filtering in among the life he had here. Because he was still here at the Physical Cottage, he was still in Tumbleweed Texas. He glanced behind him, and then forward again. Rey was looking at him, the connection solid. Was this Rey here in Tumbleweed?
He could feel her as keenly as he could feel Eliot in the next room over, and those two things slammed together, so that he swallowed hard and reminded himself to breathe.
"You did this too," he finally said, not knowing what else to say.
They'd lived a whole life together, if she had. A connection that had been forged together, possibly by Snoke, but that didn't matter because Snoke had died, and Kylo was finally free of him, but that hadn't brought him the peace he'd hoped for. Kylo had believed his mother dead too, and that pain could be felt underneath the weight of everything else that had been dumped upon him. He'd believed himself alone except for Rey, until she'd turned on him too. But of course she had turned on him - and that was another voice, one that was both his own, and yet not his own. The discongruence of having a full year having been lived here. He'd been foolish to not realize that then. But here he understood that she never would have.
"We still have the connection." An addendum, a peace offering? Or something - he didn't even know what it was. There was a rush of hope pushing up from the shadows that felt foreign to the type of hope he usually asked for, and unnecessary in the context of being here. He wasn't alone here - he didn't need Rey to connect with another human being. Technically not even one who was strong in the Force. He shook his head. "Why do we still have the connection. You just got all that too, didn't you?"
Steeled reserve had coursed through Rey as she had gazed upon Ben Solo, arm raised and resting against a panel of the Falcon as those remaining of the fleet could be heard moving deeper into the freighter. Her chest rose and she stared him down with an ache inside her that she was unaccustomed to feeling in that life. She'd felt entirely alone for most of her years and though there was a reprieve over the recent course of events, namely in the way of Finn and Han and Chewie and Leia, it was with Ben Solo that she'd finally felt a connection that had been unlike any other. There was a connection there that was identified and stoked by Snoke, but it hadn't been completely by his creation. There was an understanding and there had been a belief in Ben that had grown in Rey, one of which she'd be so certain of that she'd defied Luke and flown off to the heart of the First Order, steadfast in her belief that Ben would stand by her.
And he had.
If only for a moment, as Ben had not bowed to Snoke, just as she'd thought. But she'd put faith in him and hope that he'd align himself with the light once more and aid the fleet. Aid his own Mother. Yet, when the time came, he chose a different path, even with her own pleas. Time was precious and she couldn't give him more of it. If he was going to go down that path, and wouldn't listen to her, she couldn't delay any longer. And so she'd left Ben, she'd went forward with what had been her determination from the beginning, and she'd gone to the aid of the fleet.
So few had been left and that drove the ache inside of her, the one that caused the steel gaze as she looked upon Ben that final time. She did not know what came next because this was all presented to her in the way of dream; just as was other details. Luke. The Island. Snoke and his chamber of nothing but red and the pain that had coursed through her. And the battle that she'd flown into with Chewie. So many things but the final piece was Luke's departure and the final image of Ben hunched before his eyes turned up to look upon her.
When she'd woke, she'd nearly slipped from the hammock that she'd been laying in, above the now empty bed frame. Her mattress was needing to be replaced as it'd been completely ruined by the melted ice water. She'd managed to keep herself from falling but she'd gotten to her feet and taken in breaths to steady herself. Going on three years now of being away from her Galaxy, she'd assumed she'd never get more information in this manner. She'd gotten pieces of information from Leia and from her other self, but now she was seeing directly how some of that information did not line up. And there was the hollow feeling of acceptance very prevalent, too. She'd been so adamant on not accepting what she'd always known but now she knew she'd eventually face that.
The desire to process this on her own, as she often processed much on her own, was denied to her for there was the very familiar feeling. She wasn't alone and she turned to look upon him. She couldn't see his surroundings, just like she'd been unable to back in thier Galaxy, but she could surmise. He was in the Cottage where he lived with Margo and the others. Ben had found himself a place in this world where Rey still felt incredibly out of place.
"I did," she spoke simply, an affirmation of his suspicions. There was no point in hiding that truth or any truth from Ben. As for the connection? It was still there and she had a very firm memory of how she was moments from shutting it down entirely.
That was temporarily placed on hold.
"Why do you ask questions when it comes to the portal?" She said, icier than intended, but it was a truth. What was the point in asking about the logic of it? It almost felt as though it was designed to twist them and see if they could break. She took in a breath.
There was so much she wanted to say now. She had no issues holding back in the past, here in Tumbleweed, but now she was given pause. "You chose wrong."
Rey had been a curiosity almost from the moment he met her, something that he'd wanted to figure out, and at times control, but at other times - it wasn't even so much control as it had been understanding he'd sought - and it was something that seemed as if it had been viciously denied to him at home and here, and he'd eventually placed it back away, but here was back up in his face again, too immediate to be denied, and there was a raw ache that came from all of the memories he had, and feeling the truth of those words from his own knowledge here, crashed up against the dismissal of them that he would have made at home, instantaneously and without much further thought, because as his father's dice had disappeared out of his hands, there'd been something else that had drifted with it - and there was the uncertainty of knowing where that lack would lead him.
"The portal did not create this connection and it doesn't maintain it," he returned, irritably, and then irritated at himself for the complete lack of calm. He had memories of believing she would come to understand, but he'd been wrong about those at home. And here? Here he knew why she hadn't.
He pressed his lips together, and his eyes flickered away from her face for a moment, the connection not taking up the whole of the room. The room that was his and El's. "Are you just going to start hurling accusations at me again?" He asked pulling his eyes back to her face. "I thought we were past that."
He was correct in that. The connection had been established at home and not by either of their abilities. She knew it could be broken. She could feel that certainty in those last moments of memory that were now readily available to her. There was no doubt in her mind that she would do just that. Only, she hadn't done so yet and now it wasn't just a memory, but very present and very here. "It chose to give us the memory of it," she clarified, though without much heat, more to explain her actual meaning. With the memory present, perhaps, their minds had done the rest themselves. Maybe.
She watched as his gaze drifted from her but she did not turn hers away. What was he looking for? The King? She raised an eyebrow. She had no indication that Ben was in company with the connection established once again. "No," she answered and this also came with less heat, but disappointment.
She didn't mean it as an accusation. It was a disappointment and it brought an ache that she wasn't used to having with him, not here in Tumbleweed. It wasn't as if they exactly got along. They had their occasional truce, usually when things threatened the community even she recognized he also cared for, but they were not friends. She didn't think that was the word to describe them, now, either. She shook her head, "I think we are at a point where I can say what I think."
Kylo's eyes flickered up, reading her, trying not to probe her as he had done in the past, but also trying to figure out where things were in the aftermath of what had happened. Not good, he thought, but without the space to determine that, it left him uncertain and edgy and he hated uncertain and edgy. Force knew he'd been it frequently enough since he'd been here though. And it didn't hold the same pressure that it did at home. There was no First Order waiting his command here, no feeling that he needed to prove himself in Snoke's demise, no Hux waiting for him to make the fatal error.
The memories were fading down, and with them the immediate pain of betrayal and loss, although both were acute. He'd lost his father, and his mother in a few days, and his mother he could have saved at least - although, he reminded himself she was here. She had spoken when she arrived of the fleet having been decimated. She'd survived the attack on the bridge - somehow - and he hadn't realized at home. That held its own pain, but he wasn't going to dwell in it, not when there was so much he felt as if he could be pulled under by it. Rey had been the betrayal. Or maybe he'd just longed so badly to have her by his side. But at home he'd believed it could happen, here -
Excuses tumbled to his lips, that he'd believed he had no other choice. What would the Resistance have done with him? He had no way of knowing his mother was still alive, that she might take him back, and even if he'd known - but that excuse held no water, because the memory of her longing was there mingling easily with his memory of her here, of the memory of his father's forgiveness, and the way they'd both allowed him back.
He swallowed.
Two words. I did. Why were they so impossible? And so he shifted elsewhere, back to her, or them, whatever they were - not friends, allies sometimes - not partners the way he'd hoped for.
"We are at that point," he admitted, pressing his lips together, and taking a deep breath. The memory of the ache of loneliness was receding like a bitter aftertaste. "At least."
Good. He agreed on that fact. Regardless of what they would decide to consider themselves -- what could they even label this? -- they could find agreement on certain things now. And she found that she didn't wish to prove him wrong, not quite the way she'd often yearned to do while here in Tumbleweed. She wanted him to prove everyone else wrong. She'd wanted him to command his own fate and make his own choice.
And he'd chosen, hadn't he?
She pulled in a breath and shook her head. "Then I stand by my words," she didn't want them to be an attack.
She might not want them to feel like an attack, but they still dug painfully into his pride. The fact that he'd messed up was something he'd said frequently enough to Eliot. And while he'd been forced to deal with some of it when his mother had arrived and she'd thrown the destruction of the fleet in his face, he'd been able to push it away as well. Starkiller had not been his fault, precisely, any more than the destruction of his mother's bridge had been. He had chosen not to hurt her. He would have chosen to save her if he'd been able to think faster. Rey didn't know any of that, and possibly wouldn't believe him anyway.
"What would there have been there for me?" he asked her, voice low and with more emotion than he really wanted to give away. He swallowed, and glanced away again.
It wasn't that this was a thought that had crossed his mind so much in his memories. When he'd stood there holding out his hand to her, hoping she'd come and join him, he'd held out hope of connection and when she'd begged him to come with her, it wasn't so much that he'd wondered whether or not the Resistance would accept him, as he hadn't wanted to. The First Order had finally been his to shape - was his to shape. No more dealing with Hux's idiosyncrasies, and no more bowing before Snoke's manipulations and whims, it was finally his, which meant they could have shaped it together.
But here, the thought as there, even as his mind helpfully reminded him that his mother had been there. He hadn't known that though. "My parents might have forgiven me, but the Resistance wouldn't."
"It wasn't about you," was what she said immediately, in the way that was so practiced by Rey that it was almost automatic, but then she cut herself off and her gaze turned away and upwards. It frustrated her that the question wasn't without merit. She didn't know how he'd have been received by the resistance. She barely knew the resistance at all but she knew she cared about them and their cause. She knew that they didn't deserve to be snuffed out as they were defenseless.
"You don't know that." It was probable that he was correct but not guaranteed. And now they wouldn't ever know. Ben had made a choice and from her perspective he'd chosen the wrong path. He'd chosen to act precisely as they expected him to.
Turning her gaze back to him, she studied him for a moment. So often she'd been confused by his presence in this universe. She didn't understand what his goal was and she expected him to turn treacherous. She had been constantly worried about him lulling Han and Leia into a fake sense of security because his actions here didn't make sense to her before. Now? Things over the past year were beginning to make more sense, including his responses to her. So constant he'd been in trying to get her to side with him and allow him to teach her. She'd rebuffed all of these attempts and did not see them for what they had been at the time.
She bowed her head now and shifted to cross her arms.
Kylo's gaze pulled up to catch hers at her words, but she'd looked away. Perhaps that was easier, because it allowed him the space to examine her for an instant. Maybe it hadn't been about him. It was an idea he'd quietly begun to poke at here. Being called selfish by his grandfather had stung, the lack of understanding in general from his grandfather had also stung. Being forced to face his father's forgiveness for what ought to have been an offense that was unforgivable - Rey's response to him made more sense than Han's. Even if she hadn't quite understood. Maybe she did now. More. Maybe.
"We could have made it our own," he said softly. It was what he would have said at home. But there was no particular force behind the statement. The First Order was its own machine. But with the two of them… It was a moot point. She hadn't stayed.
"You're right," he breathed out. "I don't know that. After all my mother was there…. And I didn't know that." There was the memory of the ache of losing her - possibly the ache of possible reconciliation that wasn't fruitful here. But going back with Rey would not have been anything akin to the partnership he had hoped for. Even here, he could see that. At best he could have hoped for something like this, sidelined, not trusted, over-looked. Only there in his galaxy, it would have felt like a death sentence. He blinked several times quickly, and when he spoke his voice was low and tightly controlled.
"It doesn't matter. We're not there. That's not me." Or was it him. He swallowed. Were the choices he'd made here easy because they were the only ones he could see? Because power wasn't something that was so easily within his grasp? The idea of it wasn't comfortable. He repeated, with more passion: "It doesn't matter. We're here."
She was silent as her arms tightened in front of her. She'd sensed that there was still conflict within Ben and that this conflict could guide him away from the darkness and back to the light. She'd wanted to help him. She'd wanted him to have a choice. This was an aspect of her motivation to go to the Supremacy. None of her actions were motivated by any desire to control the First Order or a portion of the Galaxy. "That wasn't what I wanted," she said, tone similar in softness, as her tilted back up to look at him.
She was right?
No, she supposed he hadn't known. Rey hadn't known about the attack on the Bridge or the peril that Leia had been in. She'd been too caught up in trying to convince Luke to come out of his exile and aid the cause, to answer his sisters summons. And to help her find a place in all of this. "We won't know," she offered up, not in a way to comfort him or let him off the hook, but in admitting that there was no point in going over hypotheticals. He'd made his choice and it couldn't be altered now.
She blinked. "It doesn't matter?" She repeated with a stunned tone. "Just because we are here, away from home, doesn't mean we pretend it didn't happen, Ben," she countered, arms unfolding, looking at him with the earlier gaze of disappointment.
"I'm not saying we don't pretend it didn't happen," he returned, his volume raised. "I'm saying that we can't change my choice there, and even if I would make a different one here, now, knowing what I do, it - we won't know," he fell back on what she'd said. It was true enough. They could play hypotheticals, but he'd chosen what he had chosen. That was his only real point. And it didn't matter here because he couldn't change that choice at home from here.
Although he was not about to admit to her that he didn't know if he would.
To an extent it felt like the choice he had made after Luke had tried to kill him - inevitable because what other path could he have chosen?
He held a hand out, spreading it out as if to display an option for her. "What would you suggest that we do?"
She was glad that he clarified. If he were to pretend as though he'd done nothing wrong, as he'd certainly done something wrong, she wouldn't have known how to proceed. It would have brought her back to the same spot she was in with the last scrap of memory. Severing the connection and leaving him to make his own path without her help. He would need to make the decision on his own. And back home? She didn't think it likely to change. He had taken hold of the First Order and was now manning their forces.
And hypotheticals meant nothing. There was possibly multiple universes where things played out differently. There could be one where he chose a different path and returned with her to aid the Resistance. Or there could even have been one where Luke hadn't set him on the path that had unfolded; or where Ben had not responded with defense.
After all, she knew of different hypotheticals when it came to her own self. There had been the incident where she'd briefly gone away and been replaced with another who had sided with Kylo early on. And there was the Rey who had been in their company up until recently. There was so many possibilities.
She nodded, conceding to laying the argument down. They would get nowhere with hashing it out this way.
Then her lips parted but no words followed. We. It hadn't occurred to her that there was a we. She hadn't thought on it yet, hadn't had time to, but now she was. Ben would be able to turn to many to work through this. Her eyes moved away from him, as if she could see around the room he stood, imagining the wooden panel doors of the Cottage. He had a family and friends to turn to. Who did she have?
The burst of loneliness came sudden and with an intensity that she hadn't felt since she had been deserted in Chicago, months on her own, turning inward. She could speak to Poe or Finn, perhaps even Han or Leia, but she didn't want to burden them. She expected to manage this as she always had. Alone.
She closed her mouth and eyes flickered back to Ben. What could they do? "I don't know."
Kylo didn't speak immediately. There had been times in the past when he'd stayed quiet because speaking had felt like it would give too much away - too much that he didn't wish Snoke, or anyone else to know - and so he had purposefully obfuscated the thoughts that he had. At home, his dreams had been only of gaining supremacy in the First Order. He'd been tired of being jerked around - in some cases literally - by a man who he'd begun to determine cared nothing for him. He'd been tired of being criticised for his heart, or the light side that continued to pull at him. Yes, those were flaws - by Snoke's way of thinking - and perhaps by Kylo's as well, but even there he'd hated the way that had felt.
Here.
Well, here he could see more clearly that those things weren't flaws. The heart he'd been unable to deny, had been what pulled him with Eliot. He'd wanted connection at home, and he'd wanted it here, and here in Tumbleweed he had found it. Here in Tumbleweed, he'd been trying to practice that. And maybe he didn't entirely know what to do with the Force, but if you were to ask him, he would absolutely put everything down for the people he cared for. And possibly even some he didn't.
"You know what happened, you know why I left," he hesitated. "Eliot's the only other person here who knows that. We're connected, unless we break it. Which, to be fair," he said dryly. "I'm not really interested in you popping into my bedroom while I'm having sex, so breaking that connection isn't the worst notion." But it wasn't just that connection. It was the events themselves - things only they had lived. He chewed on his lower lip. "What do you want to do?"
It was a question he had never asked her. He'd assumed he needed to bribe her, or convince her, or compel her - to make her see that she needed him. Maybe she didn't need him. And maybe that wasn't the worst thing he could think of anymore.
She did know and she had many questions she had intended to ask eventually. That intent was likely sidelined back home. She didn't see herself speaking to Ben as openly as she had during those conversations that had been bridged by Snoke. And one of the most prominent of those questions was why. Why hadn't he gone to Leia when he still could? Was the trust completely gone because of Luke's mistake?
She didn't have time to comment on the underlying piece of information he was providing, of the level of trust he had in the Magician, because her face distorted into a look of disagreement. "I do not want to see that," she agreed, though even she could tell it was more of a joke than him seriously thinking it could happen. Even if it could. She shook her head, "No. We aren't keep this."
She didn't want to suddenly be by his side without any warning. She wanted to choose when she spoke to Ben. And that was laying it out even to herself. She didn't want to not speak to him.
"I want to break it."
There was the practical recognition that it was the obvious thing to do. It was at best frustrating, and at worse manipulative and violating, probably. The fact that they'd had no control over it at all when Snoke had laced them together was irritating to Kylo as well, but that didn't mean there wasn't a sting when she seemed so certain. It wasn't logical to be upset. He hadn't asked for the connection, it had been forced upon both of them against their wills, and he didn't need it here, but emotion and logic didn't always have a connected string in Kylo's experience.
He opened his mouth, glanced away, and finally brought his attention back to her. "Then do it," he told her.
There were other things he wanted to say, that he didn't really want to continue with whatever they were here. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that they'd shared something significant, even if they'd ended up on opposite sides of it, but instead he clamped his mouth shut. He didn't need to bribe her, or compel her, or manipulate her. As it turned out, maybe he didn't need to do that to anyone to get them to want to spend time with him, and he felt better when he didn't fail at those things. Maybe there was disappointment in his gaze at the response, but her response had been pretty clear, and really - it always had been.
Her brows knitted together at his silence and the way he glanced away from her when she'd spoken. Had he been hoping for a different answer? He'd just laid out one of the practical reasons that they shouldn't continue on this path and it wasn't like it was the only reason to sever the connection. It was intrusive and distracting. And it was what she had been about to do back home.
She caught his gaze once his attention was back on her. His words were clear enough, just as hers had been, but there was an unexpected sting that came with them.
There was a moment where she considered saying more. She had questions after all. Questions about their Galaxy and the events they'd just been subject to remembering. Questions about Tumbleweed of which she'd kept largely to herself. But she didn't bring forth any of this. She didn't even take time to say goodbye. She held her gaze forward, latched onto him, until she broke the connection and he was no longer there, leaving her alone in the bare room.