Ren Waugh-Solo (behindthemask) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2017-03-14 12:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, kylo ren / ben solo, leia organa (legends) |
RP log; Kylo Ren & Leia Organa
14 March
Leia Organa & Kylo Ren
Prettiest Star • afternoon Moderate • Complete WARNING: Kylo is an asshole |
Since they had left Coruscant, Kylo had found himself restless. He didn't know what to do with himself, despite the size of the ship, and he felt constrained, even more than he had on the island. He continued to tell himself that it was no worse than the island in theory. There were many of the same people there had been before. Not the scavenger, and he was fine with that, but his grandparents, his mother - although not his mother apparently - his father. Not Hux. He would trade his mother or his father for Hux. It wasn't something he wanted to dwell on, particularly and it was nothing he would ever admit to Hux, should the man deign to ever show up for him, but it was true. Hux was at least an ally who might be frustrating and berate him and call him names, but in the end, Kylo knew Hux would support him over anyone else. The same could not be said for any of the people here. Today he was wandering the decks of the ship, mostly because he could think of no better way to spend the time. The park would have been more enjoyed by someone who actually cared but it was nice enough he supposed. He had left his mask behind, mostly because it didn't really seem that anyone was wearing masks, and he was somewhat tired. But he'd kept his dark robes, the lightsaber at his belt, the gloves, the cloak - all the things he'd eventually had to shed on the island. At least he hadn't had to here. It was something, anyway. He'd been wondering if there was some place nearby that sold caf when he rounded the corner and found himself staring down into his mother's face. He froze, neither moving forward or backwards as he stared at her. She looked old enough to look as he remembered her when Ben was small, but she didn't have him. She wasn't the mother he… He didn't know what to say to her so his gaze flickered up and down finally settling on. "I suppose it was improbable we would avoid each other forever." Leia knew it was useless to think that she would never run into Kylo Ren now that he was here. The difference between her interactions with him and, when she had arrived, with Anakin, was striking. But that shouldn’t have surprised her, based on everything that Poe told her about Kylo Ren and that future, that timeline. Still, it had shocked her to the core in ways she hadn’t expected. Every fear that she had, that she both spoke of to Han after they were married and kept to herself, manifested itself in this man who, in one timeline, is her son. He towered over him, but she straightened her back and held her chin firm as she looked up at him. “It may be a big ship, but there are only so many places to hide.” Was she talking about herself or about him? Did it matter? She crossed her arms and held her ground. “Despite what you might think, it’s good to meet you, Ben.” Despite the fact that she hadn't been here before, she apparently knew something of him. Before when he'd arrived, the other group had not known who he was, so he'd been able to remain somewhat under the radar while he had gotten used to everything. He couldn't decide if he was glad he had those memories or not. He supposed he was grateful for them, because without them he would have been assaulted at the very first with people talking to him, assuming things about him, knowing the name he'd been given. Despite his attempt to remain impassive, he couldn't hide the flicker of insecurity at the name being thrown in his face from a woman who looked so much like the mother Ben remembered at that age. "I'm not hiding," he retorted, more defensively than he intended. He shrugged his shoulder to throw off that defensiveness, his hair shaking out against his neck. "And I go by Kylo Ren. If you've been told about me, which you clearly have, you should know that." Leia couldn't help but watch his expressions, his face, seeing signs of herself and of Han in him. And even Anakin, her father, which surprised her. “I didn't say that you were,” she said carefully. His defensiveness intrigued her. She had spent the last few days going over their brief conversation over the network in her mind along with every possibility she could think of for him to be this way. She didn't have any answers, though she didn't expect herself to either. “Yes, I'm aware of the name you've given yourself, just like I'm aware of the name that was given to you.” She knew she was from a different timeline than he was from. She and Han hadn't been together so near after the battle of Endor. But that didn't mean that, in her mind, he wasn't or couldn't be her son. Anakin wasn't her son yet in her life and yet that didn't change anything for her. Would it have been worse if it was his own mother? She would have known what he'd done, felt it, and to have to face her - maybe it would have been easier, because surely she would have disliked him so much that it would have been easier to simply ignore her altogether and to push her away because she would dislike him. Did this woman know? She seemed to know other things about him, no matter how young she seemed, or that she seemed to be from the other timeline. So she did, probably. He swallowed and looked away for a moment, wishing he could just walk away. In theory he could have, in practice it was proving more difficult to do. It wasn't that he cared what she thought of him, exactly. So then what? Being here felt like a sort of purgatory, where he was caught between the destiny he was certain was his - leading the galaxy back towards order, creating balance in the Force, finishing what had been his Grandfather's destiny before it had been short circuited - and a sort of hell where he had no destiny, and was forced into everyday contact with people who didn't understand his mission, and no real way to change the stakes. The best thing to do, he'd determined was to avoid people, but it hadn't been possible to do before, and it was proving difficult to do now. And without Snoke's guidance he found himself more frequently at a loss. "Then you chose not to use it. Why? What difference does it make to you?" It might not make any difference at all, and Leia didn’t have a good answer for why she chose to call him Ben instead of Kylo Ren except perhaps that it simply felt right to call him Ben. “I realize I’m not your mother,” she said, “in fact, I’m technically not anyone’s mother yet. But that doesn’t make a difference to me. And while it’s obvious to me that you would rather have nothing at all to do with me, I’m not exactly going to make that easy for you.” She found it easier to stand up to Kylo Ren like this because she had no direct history with him, unlike standing up to and facing her father, where the only history she had was with Darth Vader. She took in Ben’s black clothes, his cloak, his mannerisms, and she couldn’t help but frown for a moment at its similarity to Vader’s in her memories. She pushed the thought away. “I have no idea what I did to deserve your indifference and your animosity,” Leia continued. “And I’m not going to stand here and tell you to forget about it because I know that’s not easy to do at all.” She met his eyes. “But I’d prefer it if you didn’t treat me as though I were nobody to you.” "But you are nobody to me," Kylo frowned. The words sounding harsher than what he actually intended. "You admitted yourself that you are nobody's mother yet, and you are not the woman who has or will give birth to me. You may look like her, you do look like her, but I cannot imagine, presuming you know things about me besides my name, that you are any more understanding of what I am trying to do than my mother would be. And really Ben Solo is as good as dead." This pronouncement was made easily, even though there was no real denying Han Solo's influence in the look that accompanied it. "I don't understand why you care." On the other hand, perhaps he was wrong about what this woman would think of him. He didn't think so, it was difficult to believe Leia Organa would ever understand the Force or the way it had always pulled at him. But if he was wrong what would that look like? "Do you not still have your own children here?" Leia couldn't help but wince at his tone. How devoid of emotion or attachment he seemed to be. It was try that she wasn't his mother, but at the same time she was. In some future or past or whatever nonsensical way, Leia Organa was Ben Solo’s mother. She couldn't ignore the pull she had toward him, even if she wanted to. He wasn't interested. Shouldn't she use that and just walk away? “What didn't she understand?” she asked. “Why do you assume that I wouldn't understand as she didn't? You can't stand here and tell me I'm not your mother and then in the same breath equate me to her. If I'm not your mother, don't presume that every choice she made or will make is the same that I would.” Leia fell silent for a moment. “I care for the same reason I care about Anakin Solo. You're my son, in some timeline, in some future. That I haven't had a child yet has no bearing on what I feel about him or about you. I didn't know him before I came here, just as I don't know you. That doesn't mean I don't want to.” She squared her shoulders a little bit. “Anakin is, yes. The twins left before we left Tumbleweed.” Kylo rolled his eyes, but there was no real force behind the gesture. He had met Anakin and the girl, Jaina was it? Jaina. He knew there was another but he hadn't met him. He had to admit there was a part of him that wondered what it would have been like to have siblings. The truth was, he could equate this woman with his mother because she reacted precisely how he would have anticipated his mother reacting. But he also couldn't deny a point. He frowned. "You want the idea of me," he deflected. "You don't care to know me." Leia tilted her head to the side for a moment. “You shouldn't presume to know what I want or what I don't want,” she said. “If either of us doesn't care to know the other, it's clearly you who doesn't want anything to do with me, even though you know nothing about me.” She would wager he didn't know anything about his own mother either, but she didn't say that. She tried to relax, even though it was in her nature to snap at him more than she already had. She used some of the meditation techniques that Obi-Wan and Luke had taught her and pushed her frustration from her mind. "I'm not a Jedi," he threw back at her. "I've killed people. I've tortured people. The republic my mother built is thoroughly broken and I completely reject it," he lifted his head up, uncertain why he was telling her any of this. Perhaps he was daring her to disagree with him or his methods. "I'm not interested in pretending to be the son you might want." “Why?” she asked, her tone sharp now. She flinched a bit. Those were things from Darth Vader, so similar. What had happened to cause Ben to want to be like that? Be like him? "Because the Republic is failing to keep the galaxy safe!" Kylo spat out. "You lied to me," he added. "You didn't tell me the truth about anything that was important. You didn't let me be myself, use my powers, or do anything. Everything was restrained and only how you would allow it. But that's not how anything works. The Force is bigger than that and I know that now. I'm going to bring order back to the Galaxy so people can live without the fear of petty thugs everywhere. The government can actually be strong again." Leia stepped back but held her ground. This was different than her confronting her father. This was out of her realm of understanding, in many ways. She never had those conversations. She never forbid anything. She saw Anakin, her son, and saw him flourish with the Force. Why wouldn't the same have happened with Ben? “You can't have it both ways Ben,” she shot back. “You can't say that I'm not your mother and then stand here and accuse me of whatever it is she did. I'm not her.” It made the hair at the back of her neck stand up, the strains of him wanting to bring order to the galaxy. She knew from Poe about the First Order, how similar to the Empire it was. "Fine," he snapped back, his own emotion growing heated and the volume in his voice raising. "You aren't her but you asked. Leia lied to me. Maybe it wasn't you and maybe you wouldn't, but I was lied to. The republic doesn't work! The Supreme Leader has a plan to fix it and he didn't lie to me. I'm just trying to fix the mess that my parents left things in!" She drew in a breath and tried to relax. She tried to draw on the Force. She wished she were better at it. “What did she lie to you about?” Leia asked as calmly as she could muster, which wasn't very calm at all. She felt her own temper rising despite not knowing much at all about the government in his world, but she knew that no matter what universe it was, a controlling government was no good. “What's the Supreme Leader’s plan?” she asked. “What is this perfect government that he's telling you about?” "Everything important," Kylo snapped. "About my grandfather, about what I could do with the Force, and I never said that the plan was perfect. I just said that it was better. That's it." He glared at her, even though it wasn't going to solve anything. It was a reminder that even if she didn't know him, she probably wasn't going to understand him. "You, she, never told me about who my grandfather was. Everyone wanted me to be a Jedi but nobody seemed to want me to use the Force outside of what Luke outlined as appropriate. It doesn't matter though." She could understand a hesitancy not to tell anyone about her parentage, but not to her own son? Leia shook her head. “What makes It better?” she pressed. “And of course It matters,” she continued. “If it's important to you, it matters.” Kylo stepped back without even really thinking about the fact that his mother was one of the few people on the planet whom he would cede any space to, or the fact that it wasn't particularly done willingly because if he'd thought about it at all he would have held his ground. He looked away, not wanting to meet her gaze, and suddenly very much wishing he was anywhere but this conversation. There were reasons, but trying to explain them all from scratch to a woman who hadn't lived it,and never would? He didn't believe her that it mattered to her, and yet. "I don't feel like doing this," he muttered under his breath. "I'm not going to give you an entire lesson in galactic history just to make you understand when you'll have already made up your mind about me anyway." Leia narrowed her eyes for a moment and then sighed with nearly her entire body. “Well, I guess that's all there is for us then,” she said. “You've already made up your mind about me and clearly, according to you, I’ve already made up my mind about you.” She watched him for a moment and then stepped back. “It's clear your relationship with your mother is lacking, Ben,” she said, “and while I hope that's not on her end, I'm not going to push myself on you if you've already decided just what type of person I am and will be.” It was what he wanted, wasn't it? For her to leave him alone? Why then did it sting with the prickles of failure, like he'd somehow managed to fail a quiz that he hadn't signed up to take? He swallowed, raising his eyes to glare at her underneath furrowed brows. But only for an instant as any confidence he felt in having achieved the desired reaction faded away, and he stepped away his shoulders pulling in under the weight of an accusation - of what he wasn't even certain. "If all you're interested in is politics and the galaxy then you are just like her, but it doesn't matter," he repeated. If he said it frequently enough, then maybe it would eventually ring true. That gnawing edge of anxiety that blossomed up when, yes, it mattered more than he wanted it to. She didn't need him though, and she wasn't his mother, so any feeling of failure was made more absurd because of that reality. He needed to get control and focus on things that actually mattered. That was difficult to do when there was nothing of any real importance on the ship. "I'm glad to see you've come to your senses." An eyebrow arched and any number of retorts came to Leia’s mind, and she fought to bite her tongue and all of them back. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again sometime, Ben,” she said finally, then gave him a nod and sidestepped around him to walk away. She hoped that he didn’t notice how tightly her fingers gripped her skirts or how her breathing was shallow as she tried to fight back the tears that pricked at the backs of her eyes. One of the hardest things she did was keep her chin set and not look back. |