who: Kylo Ren, Alucard Emery & Rhy Maresh when: Late April-ish. where: The Physical Cottage and Kitchen What: Kylo had offered to teach Alucard and Rhy cooking, and tell him a bit about his life. warnings: Discussion of what Kylo's done, some justifications, etc. status: COMPLETE.
The cruise had been fine, enjoyable even, and there had been much that Kylo Ren had enjoyed about his time on the boat - in particular it not ending in apocalyptic space issues, and having been placed in the same space as Eliot - but there had been one thing he had genuinely missed completely and that was the kitchen.
The kitchen in the cottage was large enough that he could do some proper cooking and baking in it - which was what he was setting up to do today. He'd pulled out some of the recipes and began to organize ingredients. Usually he made stews or something that would be practical, but today's plan was pastries. He felt impractical today, and also, perhaps there was the need for something sweet if he was going to tell Rhy anything about his history.
By the time there was the knock on the cottage door, he'd more or less prepared most things so he left the kitchen as it was and headed to the front door to meet his cooking companions. He pulled the door open, and smiled briefly. "I've got things ready," he said as way of welcoming them. Then realizing that might have sounded a bit abrupt, he added: "Just uh, you can come back to the kitchen with me. I'm glad you both came."
--
It was an abrupt greeting, but Rhy did not take it personally, and he was far too gracious to even show that he had noticed. He smiled warmly and smoothed the moment over by saying, “Excellent, thank you. We’re ready, as well.”
He had, for the purposes of the cooking lesson, made an attempt at trying this world’s fashion - which was inherently more casual from his perspective simply because nothing in Tumbleweed’s stores were as finely made as the royal garb he’d worn at home. He was still not very good at true casual wear, and had ended up in a pair of dark grey wool trousers and a deep burgundy silk shirt.
He was also carrying a bottle of wine, because it felt appropriate to bring a gift for someone who was not only allowing them into their home but providing food, but teaching them the skill of making the food. Neither he nor Alucard were quite sure of this world’s courtesy rules surrounding such things, but they had agreed that the gesture couldn’t hurt.
He proffered the bottle to Kylo as he stepped inside. “I hope you enjoy wine,” he said. “We wanted to bring you a gift, to thank you for your time and effort spent teaching us.” With a slightly self-deprecating smile, he added, “I will try not to be such a poor student that I drive you to drink.”
--
Alucard smiled as he entered and could not help but let his eyes wander. The Physical Cabin was a place of magic, and while the complex tapestry of spells, overlaid over time from multiple users was mostly of the same sort, the soft glow lighting up the whole cabin more than any of the natural light filtering through the door and windows, more than the electricity sending waves from lamps set about. It was thoroughly messily magical, and Alucard could have stood there for an hour, simply untangling each spell from the others. Such a puzzle box of magic.
It was, however, horrendously rude to stare off at (visibly) nothing while visiting, so he tore his eyes away and brought his attention back to Kylo and Rhy, exchanging the discussed gift. Alucard had spied a supply of alcohol, so at the least it would go over well with someone. But were it not to Kylo’s preferences, they would have to do better in the future. Not everyone could be so easy to shop for as Bard.
“As I understand it, baking is quite a different beast than cooking,” Alucard stepped slowly toward the kitchen, the smells being something of a guide. “Less forgiving, more precise.” His smile was only growing, for it sounded like the way he finessed magic. Something he would have to learn the same way as Rhy, since his little gift would be of no benefit.
He grinned. “Some of the appeal, I would think.”
--
Kylo had not been anticipating a present, but the wine was a pleasant surprise and he took the bottle. "Eliot and I do enjoy a cup, yes," he told Rhy and then added, almost as if he'd just remembered, "Thank you. This way."
The Physical Cottage was unlike any house Kylo had ever lived in. It was different from the messy mechanics of his Father's ship, or the senators apartments his mother had kept, and certainly far different from the streamlined no-nonsense housing of the First Order. The Physical Cottage was everything altogether, a perfect mish mash of all of its inhabitants through the years, even though for Kylo it was usually Eliot's Cottage. Intellectually he knew this wasn't the case, but it had been Eliot's first here - and so.
The kitchen was a decent size for projects, and Kylo had laid out some of the items already. Bowls, and ingredients on one cabinet, the oven was heating, and he nodded back to Alucard. "Baking is quite precise yes," he told him. "Cooking can be, but it allows more room for experimentation within the rules I think. Baking, will be best if instructions are followed precisely and ingredients are kept as the recipe says. It is certainly part of the appeal for me," he smiled slightly.
"What experience have you had?"
--
“Ah, good,” Rhy said, his smile warming with relief that their gift was at least acceptable. He followed Kylo into the house, glancing around with interest. It was a warm and well-lived in house, clearly full of people. Having grown up in a palace that was either fairly empty or full of strangers that he could not properly connect to, he could not help but feel a little envious of it. But it did not last very long.
His eyes slid sideways to look at Alucard, and wondered what he was able to see in it. Something beautiful and magical, no doubt.
His attention returned to their surroundings as they entered the kitchen, taking in the items that had been arranged for the task ahead of them. “I am woefully inexperienced,” he said, with a self-deprecating smile. He spread his hands open, palm up, in front of him. “I’ve used the oven for… pizza, and a tartiflette, on the ship, and that was my first experience with baking anything. But pastries, I have never done.”
--
The kitchen was well organized, smaller than the palace’s kitchen certainly (whose wasn’t?) but larger than many a kitchen part an inn, tavern or ship. Certainly larger than a ship’s galley, their cruise ship notwithstanding. The bowls, the supplies, the ingredients neatly laid out appealed to Alucard too. And he had a feeling that, however more useful cooking would be most of the time, baking would be much more fun.
“Only a few days for an establishment whose standards were that it would not kill the customers, and the expectations of those sitting down weren’t much different,” Alucard replied. With effort, his hands stayed where they were, resisting the effort to slide along his wrists. That branding hadn’t happened yet, but that time had not been so long, and the memories stuck together, the beating before he was shipped out and the torture in the palace’s dungeons.
“Which is to say mostly bread and rolls, nothing anyone would claim to call dessert,” he smiled. “But I am looking forward to expanding that.” He had, in fact, read a few different cookbooks and had not yet tested out their lessons.
--
"Well we will give these a try," Kylo told the other two. The truth was, he didn't usually do teaching. While he'd offered to train Rey in the Force, she'd never really taken him up on it, and he'd never tried to teach anyone to cook, so it was possible that it would be a disaster, but he was willing to give it a try, and so he pulled out the recipe, noting the ingredients, and giving some basic instructions. Things like measuring carefully, being precise, the idea being that the recipe would turn out exactly right every time.
As he did some of that, he also noted some of the ingredients they'd be working with, ending with the berries he'd picked up. "They would be fresher later in the season," he told the other two men. "It's a little early for them from the farmer's market, but I think these will do regardless. We might add just a touch more sugar when we put them on, but for now, we could stem and wash them together so they're ready."
He pulled out a pair of colanders and sat them in the sink, pouring berries into each. "It shouldn't take long with the three of us, and we could talk a bit, if you want," Kylo told them, as he pulled out an empty bowl. He'd promised Rhy a bit about his own history, and although he didn't entirely enjoy talking about it, he supposed it might be better heard from him than from others, which wasn't impossible that it might happen considering the lack of courtesy some on the network showed.
--
Rhy paid careful attention to the instructions. He had also read the recipes that Kylo had sent him beforehand, which he was grateful for, because it made him feel less overwhelmed, less anxious about whether he would manage to do it right. It was one thing to cook with Alucard or Kell, and yet another to do it in front of someone he knew less well. The first few cooking classes on the boat had stressed him out, before he’d gotten some of the basics down.
“I can handle talking,” he said with a smile. “So long as you don’t give me any task too complicated. Measuring and mixing, I think I can handle along with conversation.”
He had not told Alucard, yet, about Kylo’s admission that he was, perhaps, the villain of his story. He did not know if that was the kind of talk that Kylo intended to have right now, and he wasn’t going to try to steer the conversation in that direction. Regardless, he did want to socialize, even more than he wanted to learn the art of baking.
--
Alucard took to having something to do with his hands well. He could handle most social situations well, but it was more enjoyable to be doing something. Guard duty and the time spent studying magic where most magic - his magic - did not work held a certain sort of boredom. Conversation was good, but over food and drink or a game of cards, at the least, made it more natural. Perhaps that said something of his socialization, the willing aspects taking part at the Sanctuary while learning magic or out and about town. It stuck.
His hands, and to some extent his eyes, went to work pulling the green plant matter away from the berries. “By all means, count me in,” Alucard agreed. “I will work as hard and as well. Any defect in the end will be due to inexperience.” That held little shame for him, as he could easily laugh at his handiwork. It would improve in time, if he cared to stick with it.
He smiled but did not immediately suggest a topic. Kylo’s words came with the feeling of something on his mind. Not knowing what, Alucard could not steer the ship.
--
Kylo handed over the berries, showing them how to do each task, as his mind wandered how to even start the conversation with Rhy. And while he didn't particularly care that Alucard knew - it seemed ridiculous to care when anyone could know - it didn't mean that it was easy to talk about.
He stepped back from the berries, just watching the other two work, as he reached for the butter to pull it out, and let it soften just a bit. It needed to be cold, but it would be incredibly cold from the refrigerator and letting it sit out the length of time the berries would take, would probably help it work better as they worked on the pastry dough itself.
"I think I had promised some explanation," he offered hesitantly. Even if it was ridiculous, and it was unnecessary to be awkward about it. "About my home world, I mean. I have been working with the First Order, with a leader named Snoke," he said these things matter of factly. "In retrospect, I'm not certain this was the wisest choice, but it made sense there. Most of those that are here from my world would fight with the Resistance, they fight the First Order, and would consider me a villain. That is largely what I was referring to before."
--
For all that he had half-expected this conversation to happen today, Rhy was still not entirely sure how to handle it. He liked Kylo; the man had protected Alucard in the fight, and he had been nothing but kind to them. Which made Rhy a little nervous of what the man was going to say, if he was being honest, because he did not want this new friendship to break.
“Ah, yes,” he said, mostly for Alucard’s benefit. “I remember you saying that.”
He kept most of his focus on what his hands were doing, but he glanced briefly up at Kylo. “Is it your own actions, or your association with the actions of those others?”
--
Alucard kept working, neither rushing nor slowing down the berry washing process. It helped to have something to do, when listening to something that took some effort. Had Kylo wanted their - or Rhy’s - sole attention to say wherever this was leading, he could have had it. But he had waited until there was something to do. So while Alucard listened to the tone of his voice, noted the names of organizations and people that Kylo referred to, he let Kylo have the privacy of whatever his face gave away. What couldn’t be seen reflected in the glass anyway.
“What is it they, and you, have done?” he followed up softly. Some context was missing, but Alucard could fill in some gaps. Something needed explanation - from the sounds of it, how other people thought of and felt about Kylo Ren - and it was not some wholly unfounded basis. If it were, it wouldn’t require so much careful groundwork. He wasn’t judging yet. But curious, with an open mind. Alucard had what he had seen of Kylo Ren here, both in battle and out of it. No doubt Kylo was a formidable person, both with the combat skills he demonstrated and his deep aura the color of many others, presumably of the same universe.
--
There were reasons.
And of course some of those reasons were things he could share, and others were things he'd prefer not to. And even now, here, he was still untangling them all. The politics of the galaxy, the longing to not be feared, crashing against the reality that he was feared, and if he was feared then why not be truly feared? Snoke's acceptance of his place in providing that fear to others.
He reached for berries and started to destem them, quietly, one thing after another. How to explain to someone who didn't know the history of the galaxy? How to contextualize it.
"I have powers," he said finally. "They're powers you've both seen. I've had them since I was a boy. My Uncle sought to teach me those powers, or to control those powers and me." That is not how his mother would tell the story, but Kylo frowned slightly around it. It was true from his perspective. If he wanted someone else's perspective to be told, he'd let them see it from the film. "It didn't go well," he said finally.
"I was sought by another teacher that I believed accepted me better, but he also wanted to control those powers and me with them. The First Order was born from the Empire, and equally ruthless in consolidation of power. I bear weight in much of that, regardless of my reasons. Snoke pushed me to be the heir to my Grandfather's power. My Grandfather utilized the Dark Side, and I have, but I also feel the light."
He twisted one stem out of the berry in his hand and then he popped that berry in his mouth, and pulled in a breath. "There's a lot of history, I'm not certain if that makes sense. The First Order sought power, and they did not necessarily care about the casualties in that pursuit."
--
Alucard listened. His hands joined in the process of removing the leafy parts of the berries, something to do while Kylo continued to share part of his past, his history, and that of other people who lived here. His part in it. All of it, how Kylo understood it and was willing to share.
While familiar themes around control were familiar to Alucard, he did his best not to ponder those connections tightly. No doubt, had he been more pliable, his father would have been more than pleased to use Alucard’s power for his ambitions. But his control had been focused on other matters. No, to have teachers that wanted to control someone and their power, it far more closely resembled the antari stories of late. Kell had been raised in the royal household, from a young age, but he had been a weapon, powers at the throne’s disposal, to the previous king. They had been a show of force, something which helped keep the peace. Vesk and Faro had not wanted to fight an antari, though surely an army could defeat one man. Kell had not been the only element holding the piece. But Alucard saw the ways in which, even as Rhy loved him as a brother, the language Kylo used reflected a similar kind of attitude.
With a key difference. A few of them. But when it came to how they were utilized, wielded, and how they chose to act, Arnes had not been expanding its boundaries, had not been at war of any kind. The closest to it had been facing Osaron, something utterly beyond the normal bounds. But this First Order, this Snoke, and Kylo with them had sought power over others, had killed to get it, had from the sounds of it killed innocent people.
That did not sit easily. But Alucard was neither the sort to draw a weapon and demand justice then and there nor the kind to leave having heard enough to know blood stained Kylo’s hands. “I am sure it would make more sense if we knew that history,” Alucard replied, “but if we knew that history, we would likely also know more about you.” It was not impossible to know the history of where Kylo came from without Kylo Ren in it. But unless Alucard sought it out here, he had known and had access to none of it.
“It is human to want acceptance and to seek it,” Alucard replied to the substance of the matter, at least what he could gather from it. “Would it be an accurate guess,” he looked toward Kylo, motioning to gesture that he spoke from partial understanding, “that many, if not most, people would consider the Empire and the First Order’s pursuit and hold of power immoral, where it concerns its treatment of people, both those incidental and in their way? Further, people from your world consider the Dark Side and using it wrong and or evil? To some extent, at least since you have come here, you have too?”
In not so many words, that Kylo had chosen, been used and acted as a weapon, had killed innocent people using means considered wrong in their own right? That he thought as much too? What that meant for everyone in the kitchen would come later. One of the few advantages of Rhy’s terrible predicament was that Alucard did not have to worry so much about him. Either way, Alucard did not feel either of them in danger from Kylo, whoever he had been to others. That made a great deal more possible.
--
Kylo pulled a quiet breath in at Alucard's words, and held it for a moment. There were things he hadn't said - so much he hadn't said. He wasn't certain he made sense. Or maybe he'd simply not come to a place where he could easily conceptualize who he had been and his reasons why. They were felt so deeply and personally, and yet also here, there was a distance to them, and he could see the regret and feel it more keenly. Where at home there was always something to hold his attention next, here there had not been. Here he'd been forced to reckon with, a lot. Eliot had been there with him every step of the way, which had made it something he could manage. Instead of closing off and internalizing, he'd turned towards Eliot, but that didn't mean that it was easy to talk about with him, or with these men who had become friends of a sort as they had fought together.
"My mother fought the Empire to restore the republic," he said, his words crisp to keep from holding too much emotion. "The republic she restored was not allowed the strength necessary to keep the galaxy safe. If you speak with her she would say that everything the Empire did was wrong." Was she right, or wrong? Sometimes Kylo wasn't certain exactly where he stood. "And yes, sometimes innocent people were harmed by the Empire. And by the First Order. But innocent people were also allowed to be harmed in the absence of any strength or order from the Republic. The republic that was restored after the Empire neutered itself for fear of misusing power, and in the process allowed vagrants and criminals to grow." He'd told himself the First Order would, when established, allow for peace without that. He'd also told himself that those the First Order preyed upon were those that would threaten that peace. He picked up a strawberry and turned it over.
"I think there must be something in the middle of those two extremes…" he offered. He'd seen the weaknesses of the Republic. He'd told himself the Empire had been better, and the First Order would correct that further, but from a distance it was easier to see how that might not be the case.
"The Force holds both dark and light, and in between them both is a balance that holds the tension," he stemmed the strawberry. "The Dark Side is maligned, but you cannot have only light, without the dark. But you cannot have only dark without the light." This final seemed true in a way he hadn't been able to really put words to at home. Snoke had mocked the light in him, but more and more Kylo was realizing that the tension in the galaxy was present inside himself as well. "There are a thousand years of philosophy there," he told Alucard. "At this point, I do not know which - specifically - is truth."
--
“What do you mean the republic was not ‘allowed’ the strength necessary to keep the galaxy safe?” Rhy asked. He had, until this point, been listening quietly, taking it all in, trying not to jump too quickly to judgment, though that was not entirely easy. “And in what way did it neuter itself? Those are two different things.” Though they were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
He did not think a system of power should necessarily be considered as guilty as any criminals that it failed to restrain, but it depended on the situation. If there was corruption that had caused the republic to directly foster or assist that kind of criminal activity, that was one thing. If it was a fledgling government still struggling to gain its footing and in the process did not manage to solve every single problem, that was quite another. “There certainly should be a middle ground between those two extremes, a government which does not cause harm unnecessarily, and is also strong enough to prevent harm being done.”
That was the kind of government he wanted to lead, the direction he envisioned for Arnes. A country where the peaceful could flourish and the harmful would be dealt with, where conflicts between countries could be solved without war. It was idealistic, he knew, and it could never be perfect; there would always be critics who saw flaws, enemies who saw weaknesses to exploit. He knew that too well.
He knew, too, the philosophy of balance, though in Arnes, it was the philosophy between magic and life. Rhy was not enough of a magician, perhaps, to truly speak to it. He glanced at Alucard. “Dark and light are concepts we have in Arnes as well, and I would imagine at least some of the philosophy is similar. Usually, we talk about the balance between magic and life, and how magic can steal too much from life, or life -- people -- can take too much from magic.”
--
Rhy asked intelligent questions about the governments. He was raised on such issues and concerns and had spent his entire life pondering how best to rule Arnes. Alucard had spent a few years on the matter, his opinions changing greatly with the time and space with people of more different statuses in society. But on the whole, the issues returned, again, to balance. So much in life did.
“Order and freedom,” Alucard said, “both essential for life. A kingdom, a world, a government given too much to one or the other will likely have issues. I have yet to see any society that is perfectly equal and just in how it treats every person.” He glanced at Rhy. “No offense meant to Arnes or to you. It too can be improved,” Alucard smiled. The smile promised that they would do just that. Not make it perfect, but make it better.
“Too much of either one, of order or freedom, and it permits the most vulnerable people to be killed, oppressed, and systematically held in place for that to continue,” Alucard suggested. It was an awful large amount of philosophy to boil down, especially to apply to so many different and unknown kingdoms. “Your world does not sound particularly stable, on either regard. The Empire, then the restored Republic, which means there was a republic before the Empire, and now this First Order, all vying for governance in less than two, perhaps one, lifetime.” He doubted it had done much good for those most abused in any system of government. And likely, those at the top would be able to succeed well enough either way, so long as they could stomach it.
“A great deal of philosophy right here,” Alucard pointed out. “But… it may be distracting, to some extent, from the focus, if I am right that the focus is you, Kylo. You chose one side, an extreme one, that you thought was right. So what of that? What did you do, what do you think of it, and what are you doing now?” As much fun as discussing philosophy was over a bottle of wine, he didn’t want to get lost down tangles of tangents.
--
"Our galaxy has never been stable in my memory," he said softly. But if he were honest, Kylo preferred the specifics. There was philosophy, and that was something he felt he needed to do better with. He'd been impatient with it when his Uncle had tried to teach it to him, and while he still had no fondness for Luke, he could see that perhaps a better understanding of light and dark than he'd been offered under either of his master's could be helpful.
"What I am doing now, specifically, is trying to …" he started confidently, but then he hesitated. "At first I was simply wished to keep to myself, but Eliot showed me that… I could not do that. People have ideas about me and what I've done, and I cannot shift those, but I have tried to help those here when given the opportunity. It isn't government, and it isn't philosophy, it's just - stepping in when and where I'm needed."
Three strawberries were stemmed one after another, and then he placed his hands down on the table. "My parents are both here, my father, and my mother, and I am trying to amend with them. I may believe the Republic needed a stronger central form of government than my mother was willing to fight for, but they were not entirely wrong about the First Order either."
--
Rhy immediately saw the logic in Alucard’s more pointed questioning. He still wanted the answers to his questions, to understand precisely what had happened rather than to hear both sides of the opinions on what had happened, because both sides sounded undoubtedly biased and the truth of it was likely somewhere in the middle. But it was certainly more immediately important to understand Kylo, in order to determine whether they stood with him, whether they could trust him or not.
He was having difficulty focusing on the task of the berries. Focusing had never been his strong suit, and that did not apply only to magic. Kylo stopped, and then Rhy did, too, so that he could look at Kylo directly. “Are you unable to shift their ideas because they are unwilling to see your side, or because they already know the truth? What drives you to do things differently here?”
--
Despite everyone else stopping, Alucard continued with the task at hand. General background on this world was possible, to whatever extent information about it was here. Alucard looked forward to gaining more background knowledge without Kylo having to explain every part of it to them. Books had biases too - they had authors - but they could assess that bias more pleasantly, not in the process of befriending the author. But he listened, listened to which questions Kylo answered (some of that Alucard’s fault, he could apologize to Rhy later), some of that Kylo’s own choice. Other than vague implications of having killed some unknown number of innocent people, they didn’t have much on Kylo’s past deeds, his personal actions beyond his association with this First Order.
It was possible to push too far or too hard. That did as little good as not pushing at all. But Alucard wanted to be gentle about it. This was no interrogation. Indeed, it was even nothing like his conversations with Bard, gently probing each other for information. Here, it was theirs to take if they wished. But they were choosing to listen to Kylo first. He nodded at Rhy’s questions, good ones both. He could wait and push Kylo more if it were called for. And trying to do better, to be better, usually it was something.
--
Kylo frowned. "I've watched the film that supposedly tells our story. It tells a story. It leaves things out - I'm not certain I want to talk about those details, they're... " he swallowed. "Personal, and painful, but I understand having seen it better why they feel how they do. I had to make a choice, and I don't know that I made the right one, but I didn't see another one at the time. Looking back, perhaps I could have done something differently."
Perhaps. It was a large perhaps, and he wasn't certain he had a good answer. When he and Eliot had watched it, he remembered that he hadn't seen another way out at the time. Here, knowing the outcome, he could say that he would have done things differently, but it was still a long stretch to know what. He still didn't feel that he could have returned to his mother. Especially not when he believed Luke dead.
"Here, I wish to do things differently, because -" it probably sounded badly to say because of Eliot, but that was true in so many ways. But there was something more than that. "Because I was unhappy where I was at home. Because I've had people who have been willing to show me something different. And I… want to control my own destiny better." That felt stiff. He hated trying to explain things to people. He frowned, and reached for additional strawberries. "That's I guess, the main bit."
--
Each sentence was difficult for Kylo to say, much less further details. Atrocities and wrongs, even justified acts of violence, were not easy to share. Without Kylo saying much about them, Alucard was certain they existed. The description of the organization he joined, the absences as much as what was said, it spoke to that. To violence that would be judged and judged against him, or so he feared. Alucard knew few peaceful people. They had fought together in close quarters, injuring and killing the pirates that boarded their deck of the ship. He had no expectations Kylo would be one of those few.
Nor had he given his trust wholly over. That was a rare thing from Alucard, and even his friends and crew he had not given himself wholly over, his full trust. His brother’s spy, Arnes’s entrenched beliefs about magic, and his difficulty trusting had worked against that. Even with Bard, they had probed each other slowly over months, despite spending every evening together.
“When you are unhappy with who or where you are, you are the one who must change it,” Alucard agreed. His choices had not always led him places he liked, and Alucard had sought to change them, to change himself to be the person who could succeed where he wanted to go. Other people could help - did - but in the end, they were each responsible for themselves. “I’ve liked who I see here,” Alucard added on a kinder note. He didn’t trust Kylo any more than before this conversation, but it was the earliest steps of a foundation, given their circumstances.
--
“I have, too,” Rhy agreed, quietly. He had given over more of his trust, because he was naturally more trusting, and because -- in the case of his status as being technically dead -- he hadn’t really felt that he had a choice. Kylo had sensed it; he had known there was something wrong with him. If Rhy had been cagey about it, he didn’t think that would have helped.
But it had been discomfiting to disclose that information and receive Kylo’s confession, in return, that he had been what some considered a villain. Rhy generally trusted his instincts about people, but this one had thrown him for a loop, and he was grateful to be able to follow Alucard’s lead on how to respond.
--
Kylo looked up at the two men, and looked between them, sizing up this response. But there was nothing he could disagree with there. Alucard's words - they were more or less what Eliot would say, he was certain of it. From both the sense of liking who he saw, and that it was within Kylo's control to change who he would be.
He nodded to both of them. "Thank you, I -" he looked around the cottage. It had felt like home from the moment he had stepped into it. It was so different from any place at home. He smiled softly. "I've found a different type of life here, and Iit is better, and I am working on who I am. But you have both been good friends to me, and we fought well together, and I felt, when I spoke with Rhy - I felt that you deserved the truth. It is not precisely a secret, and I would rather you hear some of it from me." There was more, so much he hadn't really said, but he wasn't certain it should be said right now. "If you would like we could began work on the pastries themselves?"