faderift | In this cold reality I made [closed]

WHO: Kylo Ren and Rey
WHAT: Talking about this mission
WHEN: After he gets back from his mission
WHERE: Their home
NOTES: Talk of murder, oppressed elves, and more murder

The trip back was mostly uneventful with Kylo being his usual silent dark figure with little to say to his companions. Caedus was at his side, as always, trotting along at his heels as he made his way home. He didn't know whether Rey would be there, or if he would want her to be there. It was one thing to give a mission report and keep what happened to himself outside of those who needed to know. Keeping things to himself wasn't exactly an option when you shared your inner most thoughts with someone in a connection you can't break. He expects she felt glimpses of what he's done, the carnage that was still hanging around him like a dark shadow as he waved a hand over the gates to disable her traps.

Caedus seemed to pick up on his master's grim mood, his tail not wagging and mouth not hanging open as it usually did. He had killed refugees alongside Kylo, but a beast did not contemplate actions in the way their master might. Yet Kylo refused to feel guilt. He had done what he was bid, regardless of the emotions tied to it. He had made sure the bodies were burned, at the very least. In the end they had become just ash and dust.

Opening the front entrance, Caedus enters first. Kylo shuts the door behind him, still silent as a ghost. He said nothing, not calling out for Rey as he pulled his gloves off his hands and pocketed them. He knew Rey was in the house somewhere. He could feel her, as familiar a presence in the Force as anything.

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He loosens his hold on her, hands sliding up and down her back in an attempt to soothe. They were both still crying, but he wasn't going to ignore her tears. Even if their tears were for each other.

"Maybe so, but avoiding it wasn't the choice I made. The Inquisition benefits from having Orlais on their side. If I have to get my hands dirty just so they'll stop looking down on us, then so be it." He didn't want to understand anything about it beyond that, probably to her frustration. Even at the cost of other lives. He was willing to make sure they were kept alive first. It was the Throne Room all over again.

"I'm sorry you're upset. I am." He sighs, feeling weary as he presses his lips to her temple. He didn't want to fight. He didn't want her to leave. He just wanted them to stay together, no matter what it took.

Somehow his holding her, trying to soothe her, just makes the whole situation worse. When he apologizes that she's upset that's all that she can tolerate from him and her arms come up, pushing him away.

"That's not what you should be sorry for!" She starts for the stairs again, wiping her free hand across her eyes in frustration. "The Inquisition has Orlais's support, one group of spared elves wouldn't have shifted their allegiances and you know that. You're just making excuses. Just like you did when you killed your father." She knows it's a low blow, regrets saying it almost as soon as she does, but that doesn't make it untrue.

"Alliances can shift. Those elves were taking supplies from travelers. They shouldn't have been on the road-" He was trying to argue with her now, in earnest, as she made her get away down the stairs. The mention of his father stops him short. "You wouldn't know the first thing about the kind of parent he was. Or her. You have no parents. You've never known what it's like from the start."

He was quickly moving on from heartbroken to angry. She had no idea how much it had cost him to kill his father, how much Snoke still tormented him right until the end. Nothing he'd done was ever good enough. Not for Snoke, his parents, or Luke. She would never be able to understand that.

"You would rather run away to Obi-Wan than try to understand. You'd rather push me out, just like them, because you're afraid of me. You thought you could just push out the darkness and save me, didn't you? That's not how it works because it's a part of you too. The difference is I'm not afraid of what I am, when I have to do things that I might not like." He was seething, metaphorical hackles raised. She'd hit a sore spot, so he was hitting her sore spots right back.

She whirls around to glare at him, nostrils flared as she gears up to yell at him through her tears.

"I'm not afraid of the darkness, I'm not like Luke or your parents. I love you because of everything that makes you up, but I'm not going to sit here and watch you let yourself be like Snoke." She lets out a sob, unable to hold it back, nearly shaking from the effort of keeping more at bay. She wasn't going to turn into more of a mess in front of him.

"When you figure that out, you know where I'll be."

"I'm not like him. You're wrong." He was his own person. That almost seemed to make it worse, in a few ways. Yet it couldn't be denied his worldview was shaped by the Darkside user. He felt like his insides were being ripped out, when she lets out a sob. He genuinely wanted to stop those sounds coming from her, to make her hurt less.

"You're the one who's leaving. You're leaving me, just like them." He would be here, of course, but he couldn't deny that this hurt. He'd never felt more alone, than watching her on the verge of walking out. His anger softens and he retreats back into himself again, bowing his head to avoid having to watch it happen. It was as bad as watching his father leave without him, over and over again. He always came back, of course, but each time felt as lonely as the last. This felt a thousand times worse.

Edited (wtf autocorrect) 2018-10-19 15:12 (UTC)

That pulls her up short for a second and she just stares at him. She knows that he's not completely wrong. His parents had sent him to Luke to try and do what was best for him, what they'd thought was best for him. She's leaving now, because she hopes it's what's best for him.

"You told me to let the past die, once. Take your own advice, Ben," she replies, before turning towards the door again.

This time he watches her leave. He was railing against everything they had said to one another, trying to pick it apart and build himself up with it. She was wrong. He had done what was necessary, just as he'd been willing to sacrifice the Resistance and watch it all burn. They would have been the ones to rebuild it. They should be together in this. Why couldn't she just understand that he'd done what he thought was necessary? It didn't matter if they had been elves or humans, refugees or nobles. He would have killed them anyway. He didn't care about the distinctions.

His eyes bore into the back of her head as each step brings her closer to the door. He was a maelstrom of anger and loneliness and already he was trying to paint her as his enemy too. It was how he kept himself from being hurt. He wasn't the one who was wrong. They were. Luke, his parents, and now Rey. They couldn't do what needed to be done. They couldn't see it the way he did.

When she does eventually leave, he lets out an angry yell and slams his fist against the nearest wall, leaving cracks in the surface but not quite breaking through. She might even be able to hear some of his raging as he stomps away back up the stairs and through the house. He was a black whirlpool of it. For so long he'd pushed it to the edges but now it was all he wanted to be. That anger cocooned him, kept him safe from ever being hurt again.

In this cold reality I made [closed]

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