epidemiology | (no subject)

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CHARACTERS: Kylo Ren and YOU
DATE: Early October.
WARNINGS: Potential roughhousing
SUMMARY: Fighting crime isn't really his schtick, but its an easy way to fix an anger problem.

[His father was a smuggler, once. When he was young, Han Solo had told him stories until he grew too old to be impressed by them any longer. It had been a simpler time. That period of life had been short.

Years as an enforcer of the First Order's will had put him in contact with enough people who knew how to put up a fight for their lives. Kylo Ren cannot be told to stay within city limits -- he'd always been free to roam the galaxy, whenever his presence was not needed for one thing or another, and he isn't about to be tied down because of a few so-called bandits.

He's already encountered one group of them near one of the mines and had dealt with them when they had made the mistake of attempting to turn on him. This is when he addresses the Audentes at large, but he doesn't vacate the area quickly. After all, he hardly reached city limits before coming in contact with them. Perhaps there were more -- and so he hunts, lightsaber in hand but deactivated.

But the moment he hears or senses someone get to close to him, he will hold it out and threaten with its activation, regardless of who comes up on him.]

I am busy.

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[ Rey glances behind her, reflexively. In part she seems to be checking that no one else is here to see her, in part because she feels some stirring warning within her trying to tell her that pursuing Ren is a bad idea. She follows him anyway, boots kicking up dust with the urgency of her steps, though she never calls out for him to wait. ]

They deserved a chance. [ Her voice raised to reach him, even as she hustled to close the distance between them. Even he got one, one that he didn't deserve, one that he spurned and met with violence, but a chance all the same. ] They don't know what they're dealing with.

[ The Force, for Rey, still feels an awful lot like cheating. She's seen what Ren can do with it. She doesn't trust that the bandit ever stood a chance of survival against him. ]

If they didn't know what they were dealing with, then perhaps they should not have attacked in the first place.

[Finally, he spins around abruptly to face her, the moment she decides to quicken her steps to catch up to him, so they are only feet apart when she skids to a halt. He's forced his way into her mind before -- he knows the sort of woman he is dealing with.

And the sort of woman he was dealing with would not have rolled over if she was attacked by a group expecting to overwhelm her.]

You speak as though you would not have done the very same. You cannot deny it. I know better.

[ Like most things in Rey's life—her thirst for affection and praise, her stony efficiency, and now this—it was an overcorrection. She came to an abrupt halt before him, a stutter in her step as she tried to gain distance with paradoxical eagerness, like flipping a magnet's polarity so it repulsed suddenly and violently. She found few things more unnerving than Kylo Ren willing to share her company.

But looking into the funhouse mirror of her future unnerved her on a deep, existential level that left her wondering at the inevitability of such a fate, at how she could prevent not just her eventual fall, but Finn's death. Surely, Fate could be changed.

Surely.

She wasn't sure. And because she wasn't sure, she needed to find every avenue to convince herself, extreme stance on bandit slaying included. It had stuck with her to see the one she'd felled with Han's blaster amidst the blood and ruin Achilles left behind, for that macabre showed the truth of war, and made her wonder if she wasn't just a tool of it like any other, if she could resist the eventuality of her descent.

Now, to be called on it, she bristled. ]

Don't presume that a specter of an uncertain future gave you any insight into what I would do. You know nothing about me. You can't even stand to call me by my name.

[Ren's mouth clips shut almost immediately, shoulders straightening backward and spine stiffening. Not because she had the courage to stand up to him, but on the matter as to which she chose to call him out on. In truth, it had nothing to do with the machiavellian futuristic version of her that he'd briefly managed to spend time with before things returned to normal -- it had simply been what he'd known of her, the harsh environment she came from, the need to defend herself at every turn.

He had willfully pushed the entire ordeal to the back of his mind, and had not expected her to bring it up. Briefly, his nose wrinkles, as he tries to figure out how to reply back to her -- whether to address it, or to ignore it.]

You forget that I have seen your mind before. I know where you come from. I know all I need to know about you.

[He does not use her name, because she had tried to goad him into it. He does not use her name, because he can't tell if she wants him to or not.

There is a hanging pause between them, thoughts filled with the purple lightsaber -- the reminder of the dark enveloping him again, through her coaxing. The momentary horror he'd experienced, waking up in his own robes with his memories absolved and the whispers gone.

She could know nothing of that.]

I remember.

[ The hard, embittered way she says it twists the words to sound more akin to, I'll never forget. For a moment, all she can think of is the pain, lancing and constant like a drill bearing down, and her expression hardens into stone, begrudging him it.

Had she not turned it back on him, she would think it an attack all its own that he'd brought it up at all. But she remembered too the fear in his eyes when he realized that she could see into his thoughts too. That she had pushed back.

But still it unnerves her to her very bones. She knew what was in her mind, and not just in the way every person assumes they know themselves—she knew herself with the intimacy of a girl who had spent fifteen years with nothing but her own company to hold onto. Kylo Ren, though, knew what to measure it against. He had the scale, the instruction manual, the outside knowledge of what those inner workings meant when the Force entered the equation. When he says he knows better, when he says he knows all that he needs to, he speaks of the feral creature ready to tear him apart in the snow of Starkiller Base. It is easy to picture that beast doing the same to bandits, but Rey wonders how much of it is really in her.

Because Ren isn't the only one who has seen her, taken her measure, and knows how to read it. Instead of giving him the power of certainty over her, she held tight to the memory of Maz Kanata, the tiny green outlaw, telling her to hold the Light tight within her. ]

But what you've done goes beyond survival.

[ It's not the same, she thinks, stubbornly digging in her heels. ]

I wouldn't enjoy it.

Oh, but of course.

[A noise comes from his teeth, and he doesn't bother denying her claim. She's not exactly wrong -- he had enjoyed it, though his prime motivator hadn't been to hunt them. It had taken great control not to simply cut them down, as much as the entire ordeal had caused his gut to churn.

Things had been different since then.]

Whatever you must tell yourself to sleep.

[He doesn't believe it -- he's seen that feral stare before, not just one on the defense, but the pleasure of showing someone that she was stronger than their initial measure. He remembered that satisfied snarl she'd given him, when she'd managed to push back against his attack on her mind.

But, there some measure of satisfaction in him, to confirm to her that he'd done beyond what was necessary, a feeling he can't quite place. Its pushed aside -- he can't afford to dwell on thoughts too long.]

[ At night, desperate to sleep.

The accusation had changed forms, but it persisted nonetheless. And she did struggle still to find reprieve in the loneliness of her own mind, particularly now that she had the haunting patchwork memories of her future self to contend with. She could not deny that, though she would stubbornly insist that it was not for the reasons he asserted. ]

And you? [ Her grinding teeth and flexing fists were the only outward evidence of her frustrations, for she paralyzed her throat into a forced levelness to her voice. Turn it back on him, perhaps. ] Have you given up that hope? Or do you sleep soundly knowing what you've done? What you will do?

Hope.

[It sounds like an accusation, but he squints in her direction, obviously not comprehending why he shouldn't sleep. After all, everything he did was for the First Order. To bring about a galaxy free of conflict and question.

Or perhaps, she speaks of what she had tried to show him, of his father. Perhaps she speaks of the quivering Jedi he had once been. He forces both thoughts from his mind as soon as they appear, to prevent from betraying himself. Either way:]

Sleep comes soundly to those who serve the First Order.

[Unsurprising, of course. The whispers of the Dark had seemed like nightmares, until he was given the clarity to understand them. Nobody ever had vision like the Supreme Leader. Oh, and how he could use his guidance at this moment. No doubt, he should strike the Scavenger down and rid himself of a very persistent thorn in his side. It might almost be a fair trade to once again focus his attentions on his grandfather.]

I will continue, as I always have.

[ As much as her instinct told her to call him a liar, Rey could not help but hesitate with her finger on that particular trigger; she wasn't sure she believed it. Everything she knew of Kylo Ren was pain and hate and misery, and as much as the ebullient center that had carried her through the wasteland of Jakku wanted to believe that there was something decent and reasonable buried in everyone, that people did only what they had to, he made the claim a difficult one.

She hated him not because it was in her nature to, but because she wanted to, actively made the decision, and it still rankled her for she'd never before truly hated anyone at all. ]

The bandits would have done us a favor, ridding us of you, if they'd ever stood a chance.

[ It was too bad, really, that they hadn't, for instead she had to struggle with the weight of which was worse—allowing Han Solo's murderer to walk around freely, or contemplating murder herself, for surely that would be the appropriate word. ]

But they didn't.

[Her words nettle, but they don't sting. He'd only ever lusted after the approval of everyone around him, but becoming the sword arm of Supreme Leader Snoke had taught him to treasure fear as much as he treasured love. Neither was in great supply here, and it was slowly eating at him the longer he spent in the presence of the rest of the Audentes.

Something in his chest shifts when he thinks about it all. How long it'd been since he had heard the Supreme Leader's whispers that he had come to find soothing. How long it had been since Captain Phasma looked to him for orders in the absence of General Hux. How long it had been since the galaxy knelt before him.]

None of you do.

[It comes out bitter, for that is really what he is. If he thought hard enough about it, he might take defeat to be returned to comfort.]

[ She both gets what she wants, and she doesn't.

Clearly her words bother him, leave a tang in his reply that simmers and grouses in the way all introspection does, but it's not real self-examination. Not the kind that wonders why they would be so glad to rid themselves of him, but instead the arrogance of someone who truly believes themselves impervious.

But she can remember what he looked like when he was helpless, scrambling breathlessly to push himself even to his elbows, melting the snow with the length of his body as she circled closer, ready to—

She flinches away from that feeling. It reminds her of the darkness hovering at the edge of her vision, reminds her of the quiet voice telling her to end him, of the inevitability of a fate she doesn't want to accept. ]

I do.

[ Instead of letting herself mire in the very real fear of her own darkness, she thrusts the spotlight back onto him. ]

I've seen your fear. You aren't invincible.

Do you?

[Her accusation is a good one, and it nearly drives him to the edge of his patience. Denial is what comes to his lips first The hilt of his saber quivers slightly as his fist tightens around it -- but it isn't just about his fear, not entirely. And the opportunity to deflect is laid out more easily for him.

Ren points accusingly with one leather-wrapped finger.]

Your accusations are hollow. How could you see anything with the Dark clouding your mind? Yes -- I see it. I've always seen it.

[He didn't exactly need training to sense how fiercely she wanted to kill him, he'd sensed it upon her arrival, and it had only wavered in pieces since then. She is no innocent -- no one in the galaxy is, not even the so-called Jedi Order that his uncle had sought to rebuild.]

The ends justify the means. You think that is a parable of someone who walks with the Light? You are naive, and you will burn for it should you continue to try and deny your nature.

[ The Light wasn't waiting for her. Despite her denial of the evidence, some part of her knew that the Dark had been trying to claw its way in since she first touched the Force. It told her to force him to back down the hard way in the interrogation chamber, told her to kill him out in the cold, and it demanded restitution for Han Solo's death every moment since then.

Revenge, he was right, had no place in the Light. Maz Kanata had promised that it was always within her, but it felt farther away now somehow, and without training, she wondered if she would ever find it again. She could remember how it felt—serene, calming, like the warmth she felt around Finn and Han, but also like the peace of her isolation without anything else to cloud her thoughts.

Since she'd come under ALASTAIR's employ, there had always been something clouding her thoughts.

Now, Kylo Ren forced her to wrestle with it, goaded her with the threat of the encroaching Darkness that she reflexively withdrew from, the same Darkness that caused her to hesitate each time she went for Luke's lightsaber since she'd come to Perdition's Rest. He could sense that wariness in her, that fear. ]

I'm not afraid of the Dark. [ She closed her hand around the lightsaber, willed herself not to fear its use as she had so that he wouldn't see it in her anymore. But the fear only grew and compounded, feeding on itself. ] You see what you wish to see, but you have no power over me. I won't let you drag me down there.

[He closes the distance between them more confidently. Its easy to feed his confidence with her doubt. Ren peers at her much like he had the first time they had spoken to one another -- observing, curious, more like looking at a zoo animal than a person.]

Pretty words.

[He speaks softly, tipping his chin downward. His tone is that of someone who clearly isn't taking the other party seriously. His nostrils flare slightly when he exhales. If only she were not so stubborn -- he could teach her easily, and mold the Darkness that was only just out of her reach.]

But you don't need me to drag you anywhere. It has already found you. And I can tell you -- [He sounds more earnest here, almost eager to share his experience, like he might have been trying to warn her of the truth that comes next.] -- it will never leave you. And to refuse it will only bring you pain, and misery.

Edited 2016-10-19 03:23 (UTC)

[ In the same way it always did, his stare unnerved her, seeming to probe beyond the surface he skimmed and into parts of her that she wanted to keep for herself. Years of isolation left Rey private, and even in her enthusiasm for her connections with Finn and Han, with Urahara and Keith and Lance now, her actual feelings, her experiences, they felt like they belonged to her alone, and she was rarely forthcoming with them. Kylo Ren seized access to those inner workings for himself; this time, he didn't even need to use enhanced interrogation methods to do it.

What he said struck deep and resonated in her, no doubt in part because, if his fervor was anything to go by, he drew from his own experience. In a way, he made manifest her fears. From anyone else, she might have felt reassured, glad to embrace the inevitability and resign herself from the fight, but from him, it rankled her further and commanded her to greater defense.

She would not be like him. She would never be like him. She wanted to believe that, but she could not shake the believe that he instilled in her without another source to counter it—that once the Dark had taken its hold, and it surely had, that she could never repulse it, not entirely. ]

Get away from me.

[ The warning shook her voice, loathing pulsing out in the tremor of it, a threat implicit in the words. She did not budge, not for lack of ability, but rather refusal to run from him anymore. No, let him run from her. ]

[She has a weapon -- he can't see what it is, but he knows that she has it, he can see the way her muscle tightens around it defensively and the way she resists pulling it free. It feels like a lightsaber -- familiar, for reasons he doesn't understand.

And because of that, its easy to ignore.]

It is not my presence that coaxes it, Rey. It's just you.

[The use of her name is deliberate. No matter how her presence rankles him, no matter how much he loathes to admit to himself, she is one of two familiar constants that he knows of in Perdition's Rest. Chasing her off is not his end game.

Not that it ever was to start with.]

And denying your nature will only bring you ruin.

[ When he finally used her name, he used it as though he came to her as a friend, and immediately she wished it had never crossed his lips. A part of her suspected that he used it only to put her off balance, but she quickly dismissed it in favor of a much more unsettling proposition that she feared had even greater merit, even as it unsettled her—that he used it because he hoped it might make his message reach her.

For fear that it could, she pressed her thumb down.

Blue light flashed and hummed as it burnt the air beside her, the smell of ozone permeating from it. It did not occur to her that it would be the first time he saw her wield it, from his perspective, for her mind focused too keenly on recreating the burn that time and space had erased from his face. She shifted both hands to tighten around the grip and in one swift movement, cut diagonally upwards to either force him back or cleave him in half—she would happily settle for either outcome, at this point. He had his warning. ]

[Ren is ready the second he feels her fear spike. Up comes his saber with an angry backfire, activating as he messily parries her attempt to maim him. He is forced to step back just enough to prepare another reaction. He isn't smiling, but its the closest he'll ever come -- an eagerness and excitement in his eyes.

That is, until his eyes are drawn to her saber. He can't begin to understand how she got a hold of one, until he spots the hilt's shape. Even if he were not so obsessed with his grandfather's legacy, it perfectly mirrored another in the compound. Instantly, everything evaporates from his face and he goes as rigid as a board, pointing accusingly at her hand.]

Where. Did you get that?

[His reply comes out as a demanding snarl, a slight panic in his voice as he realizes that Rey is holding his legacy in the palm of her hand, without him ever knowing. How? There was no way Anakin Skywalker would have relinquished his weapon to her, even in an attempt to spite him. How did she get that saber?]

[ He was on the ropes. It was hard to fight the gratifying surge of adrenaline that accompanied that awareness, but she tried to bite it back. Relishing the fight in such a way felt like it treaded too close to a line she could not dare cross, the edge of a steep cliff that she already feared she was destined to plummet off. Was he right? Would she be forever resisting the call to the Dark?

Rather than concern herself with that, or with answering him when she no longer needed to—after all, she was the one with the power now. She had something that he wanted, had him stumbling and unsure—she stepped surely forward and brought the lightsaber down in another hacked attempt at a blow. It wasn't practiced or graceful or trained. It was a blunt instrument like her staff, but it sang like it belonged in her hand.

She didn't have to tell him anything, and doing so would only give him another in. Whatever he wanted from her, he would have to take. ]

[He catches the strike of inexperience this time, but in an equally ungraceful manner. His panic intensifies alongside his rage. It fuels the dark, blinds him to all else surrounding them. What had the Scavenger done to warrant that which was his by birth? Did Anakin know?

He revolves his wrist and has his offhand join his main in an attempt to keep their blades locked, but pressed back against her. As such, she gets a face full of his snarling, the dam he had held in place for so many months cracking in just a few short moments.]

Where did you get that lightsaber?!

[ The strength of his weight as he bore down against her and locked their blades together surprised her, for it was greater than she'd seen in the woods of Starkiller Base. He was injured then, she realized. Chewie had clipped him inside the thermal oscillator, after Han—

She couldn't let the pain of Han's death distract her, not now. Not when she needed to be careful that she didn't get in over her head starting a fight she wasn't ready for. She struggled to hold him back, but they were close enough now that she felt keenly aware of his breath; panic bubbled up in her stomach but she fought it down.

Rage and indignation, the pride that told her she owed him nothing, did battle with confusion and panic. It made her want to placate him, this outburst worse than she'd seen. He'd been appalled, surely, when she'd called it to her from the snow, but not— this. She remembered Maz's explanation of the lightsaber's history: it had belonged to Luke, and before that, his father. Was Kylo Ren afraid that she had met Skywalker, located him? Or was his fury something more? ]

Luke! [ She sputtered out, alarm winning out and prompting her to the only recourse she could estimate. ] It belonged to Luke Skywalker.

[ And she had found nightmares in it, down in Maz Kanata's basement. Premonitions of Kylo Ren, of rain and snow, of a row of dark masks and darker silhouettes. Of fire, and a city in the clouds.

Of her parents.

She shut out those thoughts as well, refused to let them cloud her vision. Then, she risked the imbalance of her stance to raise one leg and kick his knee out from under him. She staggered backwards, the force of his lean thrusting her back without the steady anchor of two feet below her, but she dropped her blade and dodged the downswing of his, dancing quickly aside. It was a frantic motion and marked her shift to the defensive. ]

[So not given by Anakin's blessing. A comfort, however slim. She still dared to wave his lightsaber in his face -- and for that, he would not let her simply walk away.

She had found Luke, before or after he had managed to kill his father. (Something stirs in his gut when he thinks about it, forced aside by his single-minded focus on the other weapon) That had to mean that the Resistance had completed the map before the First Order could get to him, which meant that Rey was meant to become the last Jedi.

With his lightsaber.]

It belongs to me--

[Her kick connects while he'd been preparing to swipe outward, and as a result, he drops to one knee hard on top of the layers of his fabric armor. He staggers for a brief moment with the weight of his lightsaber, its quillon coming dangerously close to his own arm with how he had been forced to catch himself.

His face twists into a snarl, and Ren throws his free hand out with the intent of locking time around her, as he had in the forest of Takodana.]

Enough!

[ She twirls the blade of her lightsaber—accepting and embracing for the first time now that she has said who it belonged to, past tense, that it is hers now—and raises it high above her head to strike down over him, but Kylo Ren's rage paralyzes her. A thrumming sound freezes the plasma beam mid-air, her full arm trembling with the physical effort of trying to carry through the blow.

In her lifetime, Rey had owned two things. The broken helmet that she'd found in the ruins of an X-Wing battle over Jakku, and the doll she'd woven from stray fabric to imitate that helmet's owner, Captain Raeh. Everything else, she had built from scrap for necessity. They were not possessions so much as tools. But Luke's lightsaber had called to her in Maz Kanata's basement, had come to her on Starkiller Base, felt right gripped there in her palm. It was truly hers.

He could not take it from her.

Space froze around her, rigid and unrelenting, as firm a prison as it had been in the forest the first time she'd seen him, when he was a specter that haunted her nightmare visions upon first touching the lightsaber she carried now. If only she had found time to master it, he would be the one suffering. Instead, she could not help but feel she had hardly come anywhere at all in the months since then. Frustration ground out through her teeth, words failing her for the paralysis.

The panic in her expression turned to fury; she would not let him disable her this way, render her helpless like a child. There had to be a way to break the hold. To use the Force to fight back, as she had in the interrogation chamber.

She closed her eyes and reached out for him. ]

[He can't bring himself to care for her panic or fury, all he can see is that she has his lightsaber, the family heirloom that had always been meant for him, the relic supposedly lost to time forever. He fixates on it like a bloodhound as he lowers his arm and approaches her.]

I have been patient. I have shown you mercy, when I otherwise would have been called to cut you down. And you dare raise that weapon to--

[He feels the brush of her mind, but this time he is ready. He stops his advance to instead focus on turning her attack back on her. Not this time. The veil around her slowly begins to fade with his split concentration, but he plans to remind her exactly what she is capable of.

There's a far off sound, the clashing of lightsabers. The Dark Side, the Light. I told you: its more complicated than that. Her own words, echoed back to her. The way Rey dances aside with a lightsaber other than the one she holds now, a dangerous purple of warning and dark robes about her. Some version of her knows exactly what path awaits her, and he is not about to let it go so easily. You can decide to come with me and turn your back on the Dark and the Light that have rejected you, or you can wait here for the darkness to rise up and drown you.

He cannot -- will not let her into his mind again. Twice was too much already. But the longer he focuses on forcing her to face the vision, the quicker the veil around her fades, until it ceases to be and she is released.]

[ The image, unwelcome as it is, heralds a paradoxical combination of freedom and imprisonment. His grip loosens, with time, and she discovers quickly that the pressure on her limbs eases up, freeing her to move. Physically. However, the memory of those words, spoken in her own voice, remind her that her fate has been sealed, that her choices make no difference, only lengthen the path stretched out before her.

Though a lightsaber cannot strike down destiny, it can cut down a man.

She slashes at him to force him away from her, not merely dissatisfied, but furious with his proximity and what he forces into her mind. With the swipe of her blade—for it was hers, it had called to her as though it had always been hers, and only now that Kylo Ren threatened that ownership did she realize that she never meant to merely hold it for Luke in the first place—she thrust him back with such great mental energy that it dizzied her as well. ]

I have never asked you for mercy. [ She growled out the words as though they insulted her: her aptitude, her pride, or her morals, she was not clear on which. More than likely the answer fell squarely between the three. ] I will never ask you for anything.