Ren Waugh-Solo (behindthemask) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2017-10-20 16:13:00 |
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To say Kylo was actively wishing that he was back in New York City was an understatement. The week in New York had been incredible. Not only had he had the opportunity to see Eliot's city, but he'd had the opportunity to become slightly more familiar with the culture of this planet and this country, and most importantly those things that Eliot wanted to share with him. It had also been an opportunity to get out of Tumbleweed, which couldn't be underestimated as a good part of the week either. But then he'd returned and every good part of the week had crumbled apart and he was left switching between a desire to tear something apart and a desire to leave completely, and if not for Eliot he might have done both. Honestly only Eliot, and the fact that if Kylo did something like that, Eliot would be hurt by it, had kept him from doing something he might regret later. But that hadn't kept him from focusing on things he couldn't really do anything about. There was the Cottage situation, because Eliot had brought Kylo into the Cottage, and introduced him to Petunia, to Quentin, and to Margo, and Alice, and for the most part, those who had stayed in the Cottage (Alice didn't count because she had been insane) had become friends. Or. Well, the closest thing Kylo thought he'd ever have to friends. If Eliot might be the only one he really opened up to, Petunia had still accepted him at face value, and Quentin's skepticism had, Kylo thought, softened into at least tolerance - although perhaps less than he'd thought. Margo, admittedly, Kylo had never exactly connected with, but considering his first real introduction to her came after Eliot learned that she'd stolen his child, Kylo didn't think he could be blamed. She hadn't been there and she hadn't seen the look on Eliot's face or felt the depth of his emotions on the topic. But she was back now, and while it was perfectly rich for someone who had essentially engaged in fairy-backed human trafficking to get their nose out of joint over murder, the matter of his father had been dropped publicly. And while he didn't particularly care to point out to Margo that Starkiller base wasn't his call, either to make it or to use it and certainly not to stop it, the thought had yet been running around his mind all day chased, by a particularly annoying wonder about what Margo had meant when she'd talked to Petunia, and whether or not it said something about Eliot liking him. It stoked the fear he couldn't quite douse that this whole thing was some sort of dream he was going to wake up from and Eliot would realize this was a terrible idea after all and Kylo would lose everything he'd somehow managed to be granted. This was a thought that was unbearable enough that he had to bury it or it would threaten everything. Kylo didn't understand Leia. While it occasionally annoyed him he at least sort of understood Rey, or at least what he thought she thought. The same could be said of Poe, but he didn't understand why Leia, particularly a Leia who had no memory of giving birth to him and who was certainly not his mother, would even attempt a relationship with him. If Force forbid, someone killed Eliot, Kylo would be more likely to kill them than pursue a relationship with them and it wouldn't matter who they were. It was late by the time he looked up at the door to the Dameron ranch. He'd just been here a few nights before for the fall festival and it had been awkward and he was suddenly uncertain what he was doing here again. If Poe answered - well, if Poe answered Kylo would just demand to speak to Leia and if Poe didn't allow it, then, well, he'd take that next step if it was required. Leaving this alone no longer felt like weight that could be maintained. He raised his hand and knocked on the door, reaching out into the Force to see if his Mother was even there. Leia woke up, slightly disoriented as to the reason she was awake. She laid there, blinking at the ceiling and trying to determine if it had been a sound or if Poe or Rey were up (sometimes if the others were awake and moving about Leia woke up as well). Wuitho was asleep at the foot of her bed, chin on his paws, and since he hadn't woken, she determined it couldn't be something outside that had disturbed her. Just as she was easing back into her pillows, ready to go back to sleep, she felt it. The Force rippled and shifted, and she realized that, inexplicable as it was, her son was here. She frowned, moved her legs off the bed, and pulled on the robe she kept over the back of a chair. Her hair, in one long braid down her back, swung as she walked. Wuitho lifted his head and whined at her. She scratched him behind the ears. "Everything's okay," she whispered to him, but he jumped down off the bed all the same, trotting along beside her as she went to answer the door. She opened it moments after her knocked, the door at her side. "Hey," she said tiredly. "Is something wrong? What are you doing out here?" Kylo realized almost instantaneously that she'd been sleeping. How late was it? Should he have waited until the morning? Eliot had been in his room, so that probably should have been a sign. "I woke you up," he said aloud, his eyes dropping to her robe and then pulling back up to her face. He hadn't meant to wake her up, or to be a problem. The whole point was that - all other things considered - he was trying to be … different from home. "I can leave. I didn't realize it was -" he glanced back down towards the road and then looked back. He was here, so he might as well dive in or he wasn't going to: "I wanted to talk." Leia shook her head a little. "It's fine. I go to bed early, especially out here where it's quiet." She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. She gestured toward the chairs on the porch, moving there herself to take a seat. As soon as she did, the dog tucked its chin over her knee. "What's going on?" she asked, concern etched across her face. Kylo followed her, taking the seat and trying to settle in. There was a breeze, and the night was warm enough, but the chair felt too small to him and so he stood up again, taking a few steps before turning to look back at her. Memories couldn’t entirely be erased and while Kylo couldn’t entirely erase the memories of worry and even fear that he’d sometimes felt as a child neither could he entirely erase the memory of being held or comforted. Even if he’d grown certain that he was too different and too much of a disappointment to be truly wanted, those early memories were still there. He swallowed the whole thing still stuck in his throat. “I didn’t fire Starkiller Base,” he told his mother. Start with the less personal, he could deal more easily with that. “That was Hux’s… project,” and the final word held some disdain to it. He had liked Hux. Maybe he had thought he loved him even, but the Starkiller Base had always felt a bit like something he was trying to prove too much. “Snoke’s Order. Hux’s project. And anyway, it’s gone now.” He waved a hand. And he’d thought he was going to go with it. Would have if not for Hux, somewhat ironically. “Your lot destroyed it.” It took Leia a moment to recognize what exactly he was talking about and then she remembered the argument she got in to on the network with one of Eliot's friends. She pressed her fingertips against her temple and nodded. It was an interesting argument, the same one that could be used for Vader simply allowing Tarkin to fire the Death Star. The very argument she had objected to for years. "I'm not certain we need to bring up something that happened in a different timeline, let alone a different universe. Starkiller Base doesn't exist here. Neither do Snoke or Hux." “I wasn’t even on it,” he persisted. He’d been on the Finalizer at the time. He realized as he continued that Leia wasn’t exactly listening. He stopped. Maybe not not listening, but definitely seeming to put him off a bit. He frowned and paced the length of the porch once before turning around. “If it was your universe would it matter? If it was your husband?” Ah, there it was. Leia sat up a little straighter and even Wuitho seemed to sense her sudden tension. He whined a little and twisted his head to look at her, concerned. She touched his head in an effort to calm them both down. She could hear her heart pounding, and the back of her mouth was dry. "I didn't say it didn't matter," she said after the moment had stretched on too long between them. Leia wasn't entirely certain how to explain how she felt about the entire situation, really. "Have you killed anyone since you've arrived here?" is what she settled on. It was probably impossible for Kylo to be unaware of his mother’s emotional state completely - she was his mother even if not quite either - but he found himself pulling in, whether to give her the privacy of not eavesdropping or to keep from being her himself he wasn’t certain. “No,” he was emphatic. The declaration followed by: “I’m not fighting a war here.” She tipped her head to the side and started to shake it but stooped. When she sighed, she rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. "Why are you here?" she asked quietly. She didn't want to make assumptions or put words in his mouth but she couldn't help but wonder what exactly it was he wanted from her. The question hung in the air between them as Kylo fought for words to answer it. He didn’t know exactly what he was anticipating the outcome of this talk to be. He wasn’t certain what he even wanted it to be. He both wanted things to go away and to be resolved and experience told him it was going to be exist in the in-between for a lot longer than that. “You know,” he said finally. “You knew and you still wanted me at your wedding and at this festival and a dozen other things … I just…” It was late, and he shouldn’t have come. What was the outcome of this supposed to be even? He sat down heavily on the chair he’d avoided earlier. It was still smaller than really fit his frame but it allowed him to put his head down in his hands, and hide from her for a moment. “I don’t know.” Leia might not have been a mother yet in her time, and she wouldn't ever be his mother, but that didn't stop her from wanting to reach out and wrap him in her arms and never let go. She didn't do it, however, a decision that didn't come very easily to her at all. "Yes," she said, swallowing. "I've known for quite some time. I imagine it's not very easy to keep a secret around here, not when so many people know who we are." She looked over at him, sat back a little in her seat only to keep herself firmly planted there. "I would hazard a guess," she whispered slowly, "that if your mother is anything like I am - and I suspect she is, only with a different set of life events - that she didn't, and wouldn't, give up on you either." The words settled around Kylo, and he didn’t move. He didn’t know what to say to that, and didn’t know what to say about the fact that those words felt true - a truth he couldn’t deny even if he might want to. It might have been easier to believe that he’d done something unforgivable. He didn’t want to admit to her that the action might have been a mistake, done hoping for something that had proven to be a lie. It had been supposed to make him stronger. It was supposed to have ended all of his questioning and if anything he felt it had only increased it - but then maybe that was just being here away from everything else. Maybe it had been the only choice there. Pride was a difficult wall to break through after all. “I’m sorry to wake you up,” he said instead, lifting his face and pulling in a breath. That was easy enough to apologize for. “I wasn’t paying attention to the time. I know I’m not Dameron or Anakin or Rey but I wouldn’t have woken you up on purpose.” "You don't have to apologize for waking me up," Leia said. "I don't mind at all." And truly, Leia didn't mind. Contrary to what he seemed to think, she liked seeing him. She wanted to see more of him, though this conversation made her understand more why he was so set on avoiding her. "And like I said, it's not that late at all." Leia had questions for him on the tongue. A lot of questions, really, but she didn't want to bombard him or make things even more strained between them. So she bit her tongue and looked over at him. Maybe he didn't need to apologize for this, but he didn't know what else to say. In his head all day long he'd run around reasons and chased threads, and he had somehow talked himself into believing there would be an answer here on the other side of it. If he just went and talked to her, that he'd feel more certain about everything and things would clear up. Instead it seemed almost as if the opposite had happened, or at least nothing had become any more clear. After all, she'd known, and yet she still didn't seem to mind him being around or him talking to her - she seemed to want it even - and Kylo didn't know what to do with that. Intellectually he could see that she was treating him like he was her son, even though he wasn't, and even though, he'd hardly accepted her as his mother. Or hadn't he in some way accepted her as precisely that? She looked like the Leia he knew. Certainly she had the persistence that Leia had, even when it was sometimes downright annoying. His leg shifted, he wanted to pull it up under him, to somehow curl up like a child under a blanket, protecting himself from whatever might come, but he hadn't been able to do that in a chair for a very long time, and certain he couldn't in this one - they'd obviously been made with the height of someone like his mother in mind. Instead he stood up again, walked across to the railing and looked out into the night, his hands behind his back. He kept his head up even though he already felt a little bit defeated. Even though he wanted to go crawl into bed with Eliot; that was for later, after he'd gotten through whatever this was. He couldn't really ask her anything about home or the Resistance or why she hadn't told him about his grandfather. With that thought he tilted his head back, looking just over his shoulder. "Do you consider Darth Vader your father?" A loaded question if ever was one. She sighed. "It's - complicated. I think my answer now is a lot different than it would have been a year before coming here to Tumbleweed, even different than it would have been a day before arriving here." Leia busied herself with scratching the dog behind his ears as she thought about how to answer him. "Luke was always more accepting of him as our father than I was," she said. "But being here, having an opportunity to get to know Anakin Skywalker as I've been able to, it's easier. Even my time on Tatooine before Tumbleweed made it easier." She glanced over at Kylo Ren. "Bail Organa is my father. He's the man who raised me, loved me, taught me how to be myself. He's the father I mourn." She pressed her lips together. "But that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge who Anakin is to me. Anakin though, not Vader." Leia swallowed. "I would also assume that, given Anakin's name, my son Anakin, that I come to be even better about it eventually." She knew that wasn't necessarily the answer he was hoping to hear, but it was something. She held her breath and looked at him. "My turn," she said, hesitating. "Why don't you go by Ben?" Kylo wanted to say that Luke had been equally secretive about who his grandfather was as Leia had been, but it would be to wallow in something that wasn’t really this Leia’s fault. Perhaps Luke in her timeline was different. Perhaps also, she was different and thus Luke had been different. There were a dozen possibilities there and in truth, even if it wasn’t an absolute acceptance, it was more than he felt as if he’d ever gotten from his own mother. It had always been Bail Organa. He had believed his grandfather was Bail Organa for so long. “If she’d named me Anakin, maybe I would have kept it,” Kylo shrugged, but he turned around to face her. It was obvious to him that she was hesitant about asking, but somehow it felt like the least of the challenging topics they could be discussing, even if he wasn’t certain she was going to like what he said. He pulled a breath in. “Because it doesn’t fit me. It never has. I’m not a Jedi, and I’m not some great hero of the Old Republic. It always felt like expectations I was never going to live up to. I was glad to be rid of it.” Leia frowned. "I've never really given much thought as to names. I wasn't really prepared for children at all, honestly," she told him. "I don't think Ben would have been on my list though," she added quietly. "It suits you though, despite what you may believe. It's a strong name. I knew a Ben growing up, too. A friend of my family. The only interaction I ever had with Obi-Wan was here. I didn't know him before, not outside of the stories my father told of the Clone Wars." "You're obviously more prepared than my mother was," Kylo responded evenly. It might have been unfair to his mother, but he didn't think so. She'd been so involved in government at times he'd wondered if she'd even wanted children at all. But he'd been there, regardless. He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes falling on the dog who seemed to be at Leia's side as if it might be protecting her. I'm not planning on hurting her Kylo thought bemusedly at the dog, more of a way of getting out from under the weight of Leia's words than for any other reason. The idea of Ben being a strong name seemed ludicrous to Kylo, though, and the words were there regardless. "Ben Solo was a child, and a foolish one at that," Kylo shook his head, derision and self-loathing loaded in the words. "He tried too hard to be something he wasn't. Coming out from under that was like seeing color for the first time. That boy was weak. I'm not him." The words came out more confident than Kylo really felt. There was an edge even of ferocity to the statement. Here, more so than he'd felt at home of recent, it seemed as if those lines blurred more readily than not and he didn't care for it. He shifted, edgy. "Nobody has any use for that." Leia prickled a little. "Well, I'm certain that your parents - your mother especially - didn't think that her son was foolish." At least, she thought, not as a child. She could see him as foolish for the choices he made later, choices like killing his father. It hurt her heart to think about, but she remained calm. "I think that at some point in our lives, we all try to be something that we're not. I know I did. It took me a long time to figure out who I am. Maybe I don't even really know who I am now. Every time a circumstance changes, so do we. I don't think it's as black and white, as cut and dry, as you seem to be making it out to be." Kylo shrugged. It didn't particularly matter to him how his parents saw him. Their opinions hadn't been relevant in his life for years now. Except you're here aren't you? He shook his head. "You have to make choices though. Who you're going to be, and so it does become a matter of cut and dry, doesn't it? Or you make choices and people determine that's who you are, whether there is truth to it or not." Margo and her damn millions of people thing. It hadn't been him, but he was part of the First Order, so of course it was him. He would hardly deny that he'd killed people, there was little point to that, but they'd been necessary, and not whole systems like Starkiller base had done. The whole notion of Starkiller base in the first place struck him as unnecessary. People had memories enough of Alderaan and the Death Stars. Just its existence would have influenced the galaxy, without its introduction being marked by destruction. Sometimes Snoke annoyed him. For that matter, sometimes Hux annoyed him too. Power didn't have to be turned against people to be palpable. He'd fed a reputation that had kept many of the First Order soldiers leary of aggravating him. But there was a felt truth to the idea that when circumstances changed, there were impossible to ignore changes in who he was. It was a current he could feel running through him in the Force, stronger than he'd felt it for a long time. He was different now from what he had been when he first came to this place. Eliot had changed him, or maybe he'd changed some for Eliot. He'd told himself he'd not willingly talk to Leia, and here he was, not only willingly speaking with her, but having initiated the conversation. Maybe he was as much a fool as Ben Solo had once been. He suppressed a sigh. "What is it that keeps you talking to me? You know what I've done. You know the things I've supported. I didn't have anything to do with Starkiller, but I've killed before - I know you're not her, but so much that I've done goes against so many things she believes in. You aren't that different from her - not in that way. Why do you invite me to your parties, and seek me out? It's not that I -" he stopped and swallowed, having been about to say that he didn't mind it, and that was somewhat true, even if nearly every time he ended up in a conversation he felt inadequate and anxious, but he wasn't certain it was what he wanted to say. "It just doesn't make sense." "Yes," Leia said, "we do all have to make choices. The thing to remember is that they are our choices, not anyone else's. When you begin to let other people dictate the choices that you make, not only by them telling you to make one but also perhaps by making one in spite of or to hurt someone else, then they cease to be your choices." She played with the ends of her braid as she considered how to put what she wanted to say. "Just because someone thinks you should do something doesn't mean that you should. It also doesn't mean that you shouldn't." Since she had met him, and especially since she had learned from Poe and Rey and others about what happened in that diverging timeline, Leia hadn't been able to stop thinking about what her alternate did, what she could have possibly done, to leave Ben with this kind of contempt and, sometimes at time she even felt, hatred towards his mother. She had to believe it wasn't simply the dark side, even though that was a fear constantly at the back of her mind any time Han brought up the idea of children with her. It felt more complicated than that. "I've killed people before too," she said, tiredly, although she bit back saying his name. Ben, not Kylo. It seemed to always be on the tip of her tongue to call him by his given name, not his chosen one, as though she had named him and couldn't let go of it. Even though she had not. "The reasons I have had for killing anyone are definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm assuming, for your reasons. But I'm not a saint. I doubt your mother considered herself one either, and I certainly don't think she would have expected you to be one." Leia looked over at him. "Ben," she said, somewhat urgently, letting the name roll off her tongue this time, "would you prefer it if I stopped talking to you, stopped asking after you?" Whatever responses he was gathering in his mind were halted by the name, the tone with which it was addressed to him, and the question that dug after the words he hadn't said and he hadn't wanted to. His gaze jerked up but he was silent. Whatever skills he might have a sabaac worthy face wasn't one of them, and the mask hadn't been only for the way that it reminded him of his grandfather, it had been to hide his own emotional responses to things too. Even if they had always been laid bare in front of Snoke, he could hide them from the rest of the world. The uncertainty of how to respond to the question flickered across his face in a muscle tightening in his cheek, a narrowing of his gaze, and finally a glance away. There was the answer he thought he probably should give. The one that said she was persistent and annoying and he'd made clear that he didn't want her around or to have anything to do with her. That was the answer Snoke would have him give, and it was the answer Snoke would tell him that he needed to follow-up by making reality if it wasn't respected. ... and yet. It felt more like reality to say that they shouldn't try to be family. They were just too at odds and every conversation ended up something like this, in some sort of exhausting lack of clarity. He wasn't someone like Dameron, who could charm people easily, or the brother he mostly pretended he didn't have at all. He swallowed and when he opened his mouth the words felt smaller than they should have and less of an answer than she'd asked for: "I just don't understand why you want to." She almost called him out for not answering the question. Almost. Instead, she looked at him seriously. "Because you're my son," she said. She held up a hand before he could argue. "You're right that I didn't give birth to you, and you're also right that with my understanding of the timelines, I never would if I had continued where I was. But that doesn't negate the fact that I can feel that you're my son." Leia paused a moment. "If what you truly want is for me to leave you alone, then tell me that, and I will." Kylo swallowed, and the silence seemed to fill the space around him. It was what he'd wanted when he first arrived, to be left alone and not bothered with any of it. Being left alone was what he wanted. His head tilted, his gaze turning back to his mother's face. The words that were pushing to the top were fighting with the words he thought he should say. "I don't," he finally said. Barely a whisper of admission, that he wasn't certain he should even make. He turned his gaze away from his mother, looking out on what probably was the remains of the corn maze Eliot had helped put together. He wasn't certain what he did want. Being left alone felt like something he should want, had wanted, but didn't now. Leia couldn't help but let out the breath she'd been holding. She smiled. "Well, that's good," she said. "I didn't really want to leave you alone but if - I would have." She wondered if she'd ever really understand him and the intentions behind his actions. And the war he seemed to be raging within himself. Would this be easier if she was his mother? Or harder? She couldn't tell and decided to stop thinking about it. Kylo wondered briefly if he should have tested that theory. But if she had would he have been happy with that either? He'd come out here and he wasn't certain that he'd solved anything at all. He was no closer to understanding why she still wanted to talk to him. He turned around to look at her. "I don't want to come over here though - they," he waved a hand at the house, "don't like me. So no more parties or whatever. And don't put Eliot in the middle of things." Maybe he didn't have the right to demand anything of her, but neither thing seemed unreasonable to him. He could have made additional demands, but those weren't even really about him exactly. He didn't want to have to be uncomfortable around Rey and Poe, but he doubted they were any more comfortable than him. And Eliot, was Eliot and Kylo didn't really want to give him any reason to decide that this whole thing might not be worth it. More than El's own friends might be giving him anyway. He couldn't do anything about Margo or Quentin, but maybe he could here. "Please," he added after a moment's silence, almost as an after thought that it didn't even have to be a demand, it could be a request. Leia pressed her lips together and nodded. "Very well," she said in response. That was something she could do easily, she was certain. And she hadn't intended to put Eliot in the middle of anything, considering that she thought of Eliot as a friend as well, but she could see how Ben must have thought otherwise. "I can do that." "Okay." Kylo was left not certain exactly what to say when she agreed without any particular push-back. He supposed that meant they'd been reasonable things to ask then. He still didn't feel "I should go," Kylo murmured. "I woke you up and it's late, and I didn't tell El where I was going." Leia stood up, eliciting a whine from the dog, and pushed her braid over her shoulder. "You'll be all right getting back to town on your own?" she asked, glancing off past him toward the darkness. "Yeah, I'll be fine. I got out here didn't I?" He looked over at her and then gave her a short nod. It wasn't a hug, or anything particularly familiar, but Kylo wasn't certain where this left them any differently than where they'd been before. Except he knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew, and maybe that was something - although he didn't know what. "Good night," he offered, before he turned off the porch and stalked back towards Tumbleweed proper, and the Physical Kids Cottage, and Eliot. |