sololoquy: (Default)
ĸylo ren ([personal profile] sololoquy) wrote2018-01-05 02:18 pm

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REN
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forcevisions: (your love is anemic)

force bond;

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-26 09:11 pm (UTC)(link)
[ rey goes back to the inn only to collect her things. not that she has figured out where else to go, but it needs no discussion that she won't be welcome there anymore. her face is red and puffy from crying, and there are tears still coming. there seems no end to that particular well.

she has lost poe.

she sinks down onto the bed he shares with finn and curls her legs up to her chest. she hadn't allowed herself to dissolve into the feeling before. had backed off of it, trying to keep it together, but now … alone …

tears come again. it's not just grief, though. it's also fear. poe will be the one who gets to tell this story to finn, and that might take finn with him. especially after what she'd said to him on the magitek. even keith thought she was being unreasonable, though he lacked context. death didn't need to come for any of her loved ones; she could cut herself off from them quite well without its help.

there's another kind of fear too. that maybe poe is right. that she doesn't know what she's slipping into. nothing seems clear anymore.

it's at that time, sitting on the bed, that she feels the bond open up. it settles over her like oil, this awareness of someone else's breathing. she recognizes it now, the way it prickles the back of her neck.

she should be angry. and she is — she's furious. he'd had a role in this. he'd attacked poe. but like all things now, it is more complicated than that. she also feels the warm relief from the simple comfort of company. you're not alone.

she lifts her head to search ben out.
]
forcevisions: (who quit too late)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-26 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know.

[ she isn't thinking that far ahead. maybe that was the problem. she couldn't look that far ahead, only ever concerned with confronting what was right in front of her face. but she knew that she couldn't stay here.

there's peace in admitting it, too. she's out of her depth here. she's never had anyone to lose before. saying it out loud gives her … permission. permission to grieve, to be hurt, and to be uncertain. it's validating.
]

I can still only see you. [ her brow furrows a bit, creases lining her forehead. ] How did you know?

[ if he had mastered this in some way she hadn't, surely she'd need to know about it. and that though, of course, spirals into a number of others examining why she has to be so damn analytical about all of her relationships lately. ]
forcevisions: (fall to your knees)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-26 09:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[ a part of her rises up to blame him. it would be so easy to hurl accusations and demand answers and call this his fault. after all, she had been defending him. in so many ways he was the cause of her misery. but that's a simplistic viewing.

she had defended him against enemies whose opinion meant nothing to him, on a moral stance that he had no apparent investment in. it was meaningless. fighting with poe had been meaningless. yet she'd still done it. that wasn't ben's fault; it was hers.
]

He told me what you did. [ there's disdain written in her face, but more than that too. it's … confusion. she wants to understand. why? why had he thought that was worth it? perhaps the wrong question to ask. ] You attacked him. Is that what you've been doing this whole time? Attacking my friends behind my back?

[ it feels redundant, in a way, lashing out at him like this. she had already lashed out at poe. at finn. why not ben too? only keith had made himself immune to her efforts to alienate everyone who meant anything to her. ]
forcevisions: (underlined)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-26 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
He was trying to protect me.

[ that's what she blurts out when she doesn't know what else to say. the piece that leaves her feeling the most guilt. what ben had done, however poe had provoked it, had been done because poe made the choice to try and protect her.

who else would? she didn't matter. in the scheme of the resistance, in the scheme of the galaxy, she didn't matter at all. she was nothing. and poe had— and she had sacrificed that at the altar of ben solo. a man that might not even exist anymore, who showed no shame or remorse in what he had done.
]

He was trying to protect me, and you—

[ she breaks off, looking away. no. it's not ben she's mad at. it's herself, and the uncertainty of her direction. more tears fall, joining the rest on the neckline of her kimono. ]
forcevisions: (get no love from me)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-26 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)
[ he doesn't mean it to hurt her, of course, but it does. it cuts like a knife. forces her to examine the nature of that friendship in the first place — that it had never been about her, but about poe needing to protect something. and if she doesn't need protecting … or further, doesn't want that protection, then she is … what? nothing to him too.

it's not that she hadn't gotten her friend hurt. it's that she'd never had him as a friend at all. just rey on her shit again, assigning significance to people who couldn't give a damn about her. in so many ways she remains that desperate, lonely child on jakku watching the skies and waiting for her parents to come back, assuming that she must mean something to them.

she blinks and the tears fall, but no new ones well up to replace them. she stares at him for a silent moment, processing this. it makes a terrible kind of sense, ben's interpretation. she has no reasonable counter.

nothing lost, then. at least there shouldn't be. it shouldn't feel like she failed. like she finally had something she'd wanted for so long and sabotaged it through her own efforts because it was never real to begin with.

that leaves only the other thing. the real reason she can't stay here. the real reason he'd never allow her to, if he knew.
]

He thinks I'm a monster. [ he hadn't said it, but the fear in her chest is real and present and overflowing. and with it, doubt. she's not sure he's wrong. ] He thinks we tortured that woman.

[ she closes her hand in a fist around the edge of her kimono skirt where it brushes up against her knees. she stares for a long moment's silence at ben, clearly on the verge of something else, but not sure she wants to say it. not sure how to. it's that fear again. growing bigger, stronger. she doesn't know anymore. ]

Did we?
forcevisions: (they come unstuck)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 01:07 am (UTC)(link)
[ it's what she wants to hear, for the first time. she never gets to appreciate the sense of relief because it's gone as soon as it comes, drowned out by something else. she weighs her own estimation of the event, and it isn't hard for her to examine and judge. ]

No.

[ her tone thick and watery. pain contorts her features then, striking suddenly. layers of it. on the first, that her uncertainty was only extended. there was no clear answer as to whether this was right or wrong of her. the second, that there was no clear reason for poe to be doing what he was doing if she was not in the wrong for it — she was not being punished. not righteously, certainly.

and third, that the only conclusion therein is that she remains, as ever, easily discarded. she wants to believe in some more substantial reason, some blame within herself, because it means that she had wronged poe in some way. that she meant something.

she presses her lips together, screwing up her expression to try and fight back the tears, but they come in one heaving sob that rattles her body. she does not want to leave this room. if she were still welcome in it, she would stay. if she were anything. but … she's not.
]
forcevisions: (i couldn't get off)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ certainly it had been easier for her to assign blame to him before she had heard everything poe had to say on the matter. before she had understood that it wasn't just old wounds, but new ones, formed under the umbrella of a truce, which preoccupied him. the justification there still sticks like a thorn in her side, but something else stands out more.

his words harken back to her conversation with keith. was he lying? he had done it without hesitating. he had proposed it, even, as she floundered to figure out what to do.

no. thinking on that is just her searching for something poe had disappointed her on. she's so desperate for someone to give a damn about her that she's superimposing it over kylo ren. she's pathetic. desperate. and yet it still tugs at the back of her mind, insistent. maybe it's because she can feel his confusion and curiosity and her mind longs for something concrete to ascribe those emotions to.

she reaches up to push hair out of her face where stray strands cling to damn cheeks.
]

You took that blame for me.

[ and poe still doesn't know the extent of it. how much worse would it have been, had he known the truth? ]

Why did you do it?
forcevisions: (but you'll all get yours)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ her tears start to dry on her face, a sticky pale line down red, irritated cheeks. for a minute, she is terribly painstakingly still. even the tempest of her emotions goes quiet. there is peace.

she hadn't expected that. stars, she's not even entirely sure how to interpret that, or what it means, or— but those questions don't plague her just now. it's … reassuring. whatever it is. in part because she can feel him so clearly, and there's no hint of ulterior motive there. some confusion, perhaps, but …

he'd done it for her. plain and simple.

any question she asks will be too much, as it had been the night of the ambush. she understands now. he, like her, has no measure for this. no tools to equip them to process it or recognize it or even name it. for that reason, she is struck by a sudden speechlessness. anything she can think of to say is the wrong thing.

instead of risking destroying another relationship tonight, she slowly scoots off the edge of the bed. she's shaky still, simultaneously frayed and exhausted and yet still adrenaline high from all of this, but she makes her way over and sits beside him against the opposite wall. she doesn't touch him, though she ostensibly seeks that same sort of closeness as comfort.

she's tired of being alone. at least like this, she feels as though they are in one another's company, and not intruders on some private space. and when she folds her arms over her obi, tucked behind her bent knees, she almost thinks she can feel the warmth coming off of him.
]
forcevisions: (until the stars lost the war)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 03:20 am (UTC)(link)
No.

[ she doesn't dress it up. discussing it seems to cause her less pain now. when she says it, she looks up at him, realizing with a frown that he isn't looking at her. he's somewhere else. but then, he always is. her fingers itch. she curls them tighter against the material of her sash instead of reaching out. ]

It was the way he talked about you.

[ and the way that it also applied to her. her breath, still heavy from her crying, slowly starts to even out as she accepts this. she doesn't feel afraid to admit this similarity to him, as she has in so many other contexts.

of course, kylo ren is a monster. and if she's like him … isn't she? she studies his face. he probably hopes so. he'd probably very much like for her to be the same kind of monster he is.
]
forcevisions: (baby i got mine)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 03:54 am (UTC)(link)
[ that's the word for it. understanding. there, he can see it in her eyes. even if she cannot put a voice to it, it radiates off the soft edges of her expression. she sees something in him that resonates with something in herself. she always has. it used to scare her. now …

when he glances down at her, it feels like something flutters across the surface of her skin. she can feel his confusion — bordering now on unease — and she wonders, briefly, if he could then also feel that spark of something.

she's bolder than he is by a mile, but not that bold. she turns away from him, looking at her packed bag. the symbol of her acceptance that her place, wherever it was in the galaxy, was not among the likes of poe dameron. and if it wasn't beside or behind luke skywalker, either, then …

where was it? she's keenly aware of ben at her side in that moment. except she hasn't figured out yet if he's the shelter or the rain.
]

I think I'll go to Keith. [ she stretches her legs out, smooths down her kimono. she's still not used to the, err, airflow. ] I told him that I'd seen what you did. We're going to travel to the Sea Clan's territory together.
forcevisions: (you shine like a star)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 04:16 am (UTC)(link)
I haven't thought that far ahead.

[ it's bald and fearless honesty. she's going to go in there and feel the situation out, just as she planned to do when she loaded up for the supremacy. it was the only way she would be sure of what she was doing — to have it staring her straight in the face.

(this too makes her think of thrawn, and the recounting of his arrival at the edge of the galactic civil war. was it not the same? she pushes the thoughts aside.)
]

And please, don't lecture me about that. Not now.

[ blah blah war inevitable blah blah. she's gotten all the highlights from poe and finn. she's not looking to start that fight again with someone else. she knows they'll all think that's the case. she doesn't expect vindication here. ]
forcevisions: (i don't like your little games)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
[ she definitely remembers saying no lectures, and there's a lecture. just slapping her in the face. she points a narrow gaze up at him, frowning just a little. it's a more casual peevishness than he usually sees in her. not weighty anger. just … begrudging. ]

Habits take time to build. On Jakku, thinking ahead was making sure you knew where your next meal was coming from. Not what you're going to do after traveling to another country and finding who-knows-what waiting.

[ yeah in case he thought this brazenness was a choice, it's actually deeply ingrained from a lifetime of starvation. but it's cool. kylo probably had to wait like two hours to finish training once before he went to the cafeteria on the next floor.

she sighs, letting some of the grumping fall away.
]

I'll try. Okay?

[ compromise. that's what she had asked of poe, right? she can try to think further ahead. and maybe he can try to … not kill people. that's fair, or something. ]
forcevisions: (yet it stings like the first time)

[personal profile] forcevisions 2018-01-27 02:53 pm (UTC)(link)
[ swinging and a-missing, ben. ]

I thought we already agreed that you weren't going to worry about me.

[ there's no good down that path of conversation and she knows it. the last time had hurt her. what do you want to be? maybe until she has an answer for that herself, she should just leave it alone entirely.

she backs off of that call-out, in the form of turning her head away.
]

Keith is talking to Loki about coming with. I was going to invite Kisuke-san, but — [ she sighs. ] Keith doesn't want to bring anyone who doesn't agree with our assessment that it's most likely just rogue agents of the Sea Clan. It's limiting our options.

[ cooperating with other people is hard. ]

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