inappropriately timed force bond moments (both nsfw and humor approaches)
dream-sharing
emotional bleed/transference (from rey, involving other parties)
inappropriate force bond voyeurism on rey/poe or rey/finn
mid-conversation force bond interruption
The Rise of Skywalker- Cross-galaxy chase of the Resistance
anything related to ben solo, but especially:
snoke confessionals with family or friends of family
returning to the light
smuggler life style
jedi knight ben
resistance-fighter ben
The Rise of Skywalker- Force Ghost communications w/ Rey
anything related to supreme leader kylo ren, but especially:
fall via coup
resistance fighter reconditioning (gen or nsfw)
force ghost visits from anakin/luke/rey/leia/snoke
defeat by the resistance, and subsequent aftermath
The Rise of Skywalker- Mole Discovery w/ Hux
canto bight:
shady weapons deals
picking up prisoners
recruitment
obligatory dinner party
general casino shenanigans
beach party
basically any reason you can think of to use canto bight as a setting piece
A note on romance: I will ship all of the new trilogy characters with Kylo Ren (except Snoke/Family). But I have no interest in exploring domestic-style takes on them. Thank you for understanding.
[Ben stares back, blinking his dark eyes uncertainly. He doesn’t really want to die at all, let alone for anyone or anything. But... that was his mother. She loved him, and ... he loved her, even if duty and emotional distance kept them apart in present time.]
—she’s my mother.
[Like that alone should explain everything. He couldn’t bare to live witht himself if he even thought about leaving her to die. The thought of it is insulting. He isn’t a monster.]
Just because I don’t agree with her doesn’t mean I want her dead.
[ he could not have picked a worse person to be like WELL YOU KNOW WHAT FAMILY MEANS TO YOU to. honestly. like, the worst possible response.
she throws her hand out and the air squeezes around his windpipe. which is about the clearest 'please stop talking, for your sake' anyone could ever get. ]
You think she wouldn't do it to you? [ she approaches now. ] If I sent a message that you were here, do you think she would come for you? Or do you think she would call it an acceptable loss to the cause?
[The sound suddenly muffles around his skull and something in his windpipe compresses. He can’t speak — slowly, his breath leaves him. She is talking to him, though her words are slow to register thanks to all of the pressure. The implication that his mother would leave him behind to die is insane--
He can’t protest, because she is choking him, but doubt suddenly skitters across his mind the more he tries to think around the black in his throat. Would she come for him? He would like to think so.
But he also knows General Organa. Saving the Resistance would always take precedent over the life of an individual. Something (other than his struggling lungs) in his chest twists painfully.]
Edited (that last tag barely made sense) 2018-01-22 22:04 (UTC)
[ a smirk twitches at her mouth. there's a satisfaction she had not anticipated in feeling the doubt roll off of him. even general organa was not above base selfishness. no mother's love was that powerful. no child that important.
and there's reassurance in that. she loosens her grip on him, lets him sag against the frame and catch his breath. she is not the only one; he is not a danger to him. he is the same. ]
Then why? Why protect her? You don't believe in her cause, the cause that she has always put ahead of you. [ her head tilts, intent, genuine in her curiosity. ] You owe her nothing.
[He coughs and slumps, drinking air greedily as he tries to parse through his doubt. No, he is sure she would send — someone. Maybe not a large force, but someone would come.
No. They wouldn’t. That was why he refused to stand with them in the first place, wasn’t it?
He swallows the urge to breathe faster, now looking anywhere but at Kira. The twist forms a knot.]
Maybe.
[He didn’t believe that. He knows she isn’t going to like his answer, so he makes sure to look at her with the most desperate eyes he can manage.]
[ he's right. she doesn't like it. in fact, her blood goes cold at first, ice in her veins that slows her processing to a screeching halt. the rage comes after it has finally hit her heart, what he has said. a white-hot fury that spreads and consumes and claws its way into her throat. she wants to suppress it — snoke will feel it, snoke will know, — but she can't help it.
how? how could he still love her, knowing what she had done to him? he just didn't see. that was all. he didn't understand, couldn't accept the truth. kira snarls as she says, ] She doesn't love you. She'll let you die here.
[He feels her fury and — he isn’t sure how to receive it. So for a moment, there is a pregnant silence as he gestures around the walls of the shuttle.]
Yeah. So would the rest of the galaxy. At least she has a good reason.
[This would be the part where he would offer a charismatic smirk, but talking about his mother leaving him to die sobers it into something a little more sad and resigned. He spreads his hands in surrender, still strapped down.]
[ what an underwhelming end for han solo's only son. she scrutinizes him, like she can't quite believe he doesn't have something up his sleeve. no. someone else must be coming for him. in order for him not to care.
she lifts her hand to his temple. ]
Just show me. Show me where she is. [ there's an insistent intimacy to her voice now, something coaxing as she begins to press herself into his mind again. ] She never cared about you. Not like she should have. It will be our little secret.
[He feels the pressure again, but the addition of her tone of voice somehow makes it worse. It feels like hot wax running down the back of his neck, but this time, he grits his teeth against it. He thinks not of his mother’s location, but of his mother’s love. How the tears she had been holding back began to fall when she found him st the base of the Falcon’s gangplank. How she had embraced him, and hiw she had told him that she understood, and not to forget her as he grew old.
And violently, he pushes it back on her, through the spike that drives into the center of his skull. She gains the information, of open space and the image of the Raddeus — but no recognizable star systems. Wild space.]
[ it's a potent weapon, a mother's love. the shot is better placed than any blaster bolt might be. her eyes widen as she tries to fight through it, but —
no. it's no use. just feeling it, even secondhand, even within him, rattles her. her chest opens up, an ache that she cannot describe. she had never known anything like that. she had gone without for her entire life, and to see him find strength in it hurts still more.
enough that when he pushes back, he gets a glimpse of something else. a young girl crying. clinging to her mother's side.
and someone else pulling her back, away.
no! she crows. no, i don't want to go! don't make me go with him! ]
Give. Her. To me. [ she tightens her jaw, snarling, and with tears streaming down her cheeks forces herself deeper into his mind. she casts these distractions aside. ]
[He starts to sweat, when he receives her memory. His eyes widen in shock, and pity shakes him down to the marrow of his bones. The scene plays once, but it feels like its on loop.]
—they gave you away?
[He sounds like he can’t believe it — but he does. He had seen the sort of cargo other smugglers carried, contracts that he refused and tore up on principal alone. She wasn’t one of those children, but if she had not been Force sensitive...well, she probably would have been.
The pain lessens as he reaches for more. All Kira gets in return is the loop of the Raddeus, lost to wild space.]
They gave you away to the First Order, didn’t they?
[ the pity pours over the link she has established, the link she had reopened like a fool. it incenses her. how dare he? ]
You ... would pity me? Look at yourself, you idiot. [ she spits it out. ] You're going to die here. Alone. Because you protected her.
[ but it's jealousy that pervades that connection between them. what did that feel like? she doesn't just want leia's location. she wants ... that feeling. ]
You’re the one afraid of being alone. And I feel sorry for you — because nobody deserves to be bought and sold.
[He says it with some understanding. Her probe doesn’t hurt him now. He has control of it — and he holds her there, pressed against Leia’s sorrow and love for him. He had come to terms with his lonliness — it was self imposed for too many reasons to count. But Kira had no choice.]
If I were you, I’d want everyone in the galaxy dead too. I’m a smuggler — not heartless.
[ what is this? compassion? while he sprawled in the interrogaiton chair? it was hard to tell who was really the one in control now, though. he had seized the link she had created, and that light was growing. burning. she flinched away from it, shaking her head to try and dispel it. the warmth. leia.
mother.
no— not her mother. his. she tries to shut down the bond. to snap out of it suddenly. to pull her mind back to herself, away from him. to spare herself that pain. ]
[He feels her yank back, and suddenly the chair feels more solid on his back. There is pressure kn his arm, from where the buyer had taken Kira away. There is a sorrow that nearly suffocates him with its potency. He takes a few breathes before replying.]
I get that a lot. But if I were smarter, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.
[He swallows some of the left over emotion, and blinks — to find his vision suddenly blurred, and his cheeks damo. When did he start crying?]
[ she reaches up to wipe her eyes. the back of her glove isn't particularly absorbant, so she winds up pulling it off. there's no need to hide it. he'd felt it. she's ashamed of the weakness, but it's done with.
there's a choked sound in her throat. she's more ashamed of that than anything. ]
It doesn't matter. You don't need to show me. The Supreme Leader will see you turn against her yourself.
[The words "Supreme Leader" don't invoke fear, but a deep loathing. It'd been his fault that his father was dead, and his fault that he and his mother were estranged as they were now.]
Why don't you just kill me yourself?
[Some of his compassion drains from his face. That's right -- she served the man who sought to split the galaxy in half for the sake of ruling it. She'd clearly had no choice in the matter, when she was a child -- but why now?]
What is this guy paying you, anyway? Power? A cushy seat under his boot?
[ would it help him, to know? would it turn him? no. but there are still tears on his face and they are her tears, not his. she has never ...
god, her hands are shaking. she pulls her glove back on. ]
You saw what I was.
[ she didn't want him to, but he had nonetheless. ]
I was nothing. Nobody. The Supreme Leader has given me something greater than money, greater than power: a purpose, a place in this galaxy. As he will give to you. [ she stretches her fingers into the glove and lowers her hand to her side. ] As much as I would like to see you suffer, it is not Leader Snoke's desire.
Don't mistake me. You will die. Ben Solo will die. And then, whatever is left will kill General Organa.
[God that's ominous. He doesn't quite parse what she means -- its hard to digest that she seems to be implying that he is capable of being changed so easily. His father's skepticism about the dark and the light rings clear in his head.
Its so absurd that he can't help but scoff a little.]
You're crazy is what you are.
[He adjusts himself as much as he can while strapped down so he can try and make his point more clearly.]
You're not trying to tell me that Supreme Leader Snoke cares about you. As a person. That's not having a place in the galaxy, that's being a lapdog. You could walk away from that now, if you wanted to.
[ his fervor puzzles her, genuinely. enough that she lets him continue breathing because she wants to see where this goes.
and it's a good question. snoke may not care about her, but neither does any other part of the galaxy. all she would do is lose resources and make enemies — worse, she would finally have to face many of the enemies she had already made for herself, and without the support of the first order at her back this time.
no. he wasn't worth that. what she had here was the best she was ever going to get it. if she couldn't make anyone in the galaxy love her, then at least by and large they would fear her. that would have to do. ]
[The way he says it makes it seem like the most obvious point he's ever made in his life. That had been part of the reason he and his mother had never quite seen eye to eye. She was always duty above self.
Ben Solo would most likely never be that person. There was too much of his father in him.]
[ she laughs, but it's not joyous or light. it sounds like something breaking. ]
From what? To do what? What is freedom, alone, worth?
[ not much to her, by the sound of it. ]
We aren't all born with your advantages, Solo. [ she spits the name. ] I was born to be a slave. And I've chosen my master well. My name is known the galaxy wide.
[Yeah, that's weird. Again, there's that pity. Of course she doesn't know what its like to be free. To actually be capable of making choices instead of being under someone's command all the time.
How did he end up in this position, appealing to Snoke's apprentice's humanity that clearly does not exist?]
Last I checked, slaves don't get to choose their masters. But you're right -- what do I know? I'm the son of a senator. I should be sitting pretty on a committee somewhere being handfed meiloorun. Or, since you and your buddy Snoke tore all of that down, maybe I should be the head of an army myself. Yeah?
[He gestures upward, for the purpose of accenting his point.]
-- or, maybe I would be, if legacy actually meant anything. That's the beauty of choice -- Kira, right? Your name is Kira.
[Is he asking because he genuinely wasn't sure, or to make her mad? Hard to tell.]
[ impulse takes over before training can stop it. she reaches one hand out and the air constricts around his throat again.
no. he had seen something else there in her mind, hadn't he? something that deserved to be locked away, deep enough that no one would ever find it. that girl ... that child. she had to be gone. and he had seen her. ]
Yes. It is.
[ an important reminder not to engage him in this any more. it is a messy business, breaking down a mind, but she will do it. snoke believes that she can do it and (he doesn't know how strong this man-child is in the force, but—) she must.
she will deliver ben solo to him, she will turn him. if she could do this, she had no reason to fear. she will have delivered the supreme leader everything he wanted. the defector. the very resistance. her station — the only thing she's ever had to protect — will be secure. ]
Don't worry. You'll see soon firsthand.
[ she doesn't take her time this time. she shunts herself into his mind. good. let something break. let it all break and then when he tries to pick up the pieces, she will be the one to show him how. perhaps he will serve her, instead of snoke. and she will be the master. ]
[Ok, so that might have been a mistake. He chokes, and she drives forward into his mind again. And it hurts, more than it had hurt before. He was running out of energy to fight back -- and he wasn't even sure how to fight back. Everything was pure instinct, but the instinct begins to fail him when he cannot breathe.
His writhing increases. There is a sense that he might be screaming, if he could breathe, and he could almost feel a physical hook finding his doubt in his family. She drags it to the surface, and tears start to cloud his eyes again.
He remembered the day his mother had contacted him, to tell him about Darth Vader. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so betrayed by secrecy, but it wasn't hard to understand why when he had seen how the senate had reacted to the information. She had never sensed that sort of power within him -- the potential might have been there, for him to be a great Force wielder, if he had ever cared to engage with it.
But he hadn't. He'd turned his uncle away, and ran from it. Stars only knew where he was now -- maybe if he hadn't been so selfish, his father would still be alive.
--there it is. That righteous fury again that has him clenching his fists, eyes slowly sliding open into a glare that bores back into Kira.
You won't win. It rings, clear as a bell, across the bridge of their minds. Even if she succeeded in her task and broke his spirit (he could feel something in his chest and in his mind slowly cracking to pieces), they would never convince him to do their dirty work for them.]
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—she’s my mother.
[Like that alone should explain everything. He couldn’t bare to live witht himself if he even thought about leaving her to die. The thought of it is insulting. He isn’t a monster.]
Just because I don’t agree with her doesn’t mean I want her dead.
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she throws her hand out and the air squeezes around his windpipe. which is about the clearest 'please stop talking, for your sake' anyone could ever get. ]
You think she wouldn't do it to you? [ she approaches now. ] If I sent a message that you were here, do you think she would come for you? Or do you think she would call it an acceptable loss to the cause?
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He can’t protest, because she is choking him, but doubt suddenly skitters across his mind the more he tries to think around the black in his throat. Would she come for him? He would like to think so.
But he also knows General Organa. Saving the Resistance would always take precedent over the life of an individual. Something (other than his struggling lungs) in his chest twists painfully.]
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[ a smirk twitches at her mouth. there's a satisfaction she had not anticipated in feeling the doubt roll off of him. even general organa was not above base selfishness. no mother's love was that powerful. no child that important.
and there's reassurance in that. she loosens her grip on him, lets him sag against the frame and catch his breath. she is not the only one; he is not a danger to him. he is the same. ]
Then why? Why protect her? You don't believe in her cause, the cause that she has always put ahead of you. [ her head tilts, intent, genuine in her curiosity. ] You owe her nothing.
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No. They wouldn’t. That was why he refused to stand with them in the first place, wasn’t it?
He swallows the urge to breathe faster, now looking anywhere but at Kira. The twist forms a knot.]
Maybe.
[He didn’t believe that. He knows she isn’t going to like his answer, so he makes sure to look at her with the most desperate eyes he can manage.]
Because I still love her.
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how? how could he still love her, knowing what she had done to him? he just didn't see. that was all. he didn't understand, couldn't accept the truth. kira snarls as she says, ] She doesn't love you. She'll let you die here.
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Yeah. So would the rest of the galaxy. At least she has a good reason.
[This would be the part where he would offer a charismatic smirk, but talking about his mother leaving him to die sobers it into something a little more sad and resigned. He spreads his hands in surrender, still strapped down.]
Sorry.
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[ what an underwhelming end for han solo's only son. she scrutinizes him, like she can't quite believe he doesn't have something up his sleeve. no. someone else must be coming for him. in order for him not to care.
she lifts her hand to his temple. ]
Just show me. Show me where she is. [ there's an insistent intimacy to her voice now, something coaxing as she begins to press herself into his mind again. ] She never cared about you. Not like she should have. It will be our little secret.
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And violently, he pushes it back on her, through the spike that drives into the center of his skull. She gains the information, of open space and the image of the Raddeus — but no recognizable star systems. Wild space.]
No.
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no. it's no use. just feeling it, even secondhand, even within him, rattles her. her chest opens up, an ache that she cannot describe. she had never known anything like that. she had gone without for her entire life, and to see him find strength in it hurts still more.
enough that when he pushes back, he gets a glimpse of something else. a young girl crying. clinging to her mother's side.
and someone else pulling her back, away.
no! she crows. no, i don't want to go! don't make me go with him! ]
Give. Her. To me. [ she tightens her jaw, snarling, and with tears streaming down her cheeks forces herself deeper into his mind. she casts these distractions aside. ]
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—they gave you away?
[He sounds like he can’t believe it — but he does. He had seen the sort of cargo other smugglers carried, contracts that he refused and tore up on principal alone. She wasn’t one of those children, but if she had not been Force sensitive...well, she probably would have been.
The pain lessens as he reaches for more. All Kira gets in return is the loop of the Raddeus, lost to wild space.]
They gave you away to the First Order, didn’t they?
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You ... would pity me? Look at yourself, you idiot. [ she spits it out. ] You're going to die here. Alone. Because you protected her.
[ but it's jealousy that pervades that connection between them. what did that feel like? she doesn't just want leia's location. she wants ... that feeling. ]
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[He says it with some understanding. Her probe doesn’t hurt him now. He has control of it — and he holds her there, pressed against Leia’s sorrow and love for him. He had come to terms with his lonliness — it was self imposed for too many reasons to count. But Kira had no choice.]
If I were you, I’d want everyone in the galaxy dead too. I’m a smuggler — not heartless.
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mother.
no— not her mother. his. she tries to shut down the bond. to snap out of it suddenly. to pull her mind back to herself, away from him. to spare herself that pain. ]
You'd be smarter if you were.
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I get that a lot. But if I were smarter, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.
[He swallows some of the left over emotion, and blinks — to find his vision suddenly blurred, and his cheeks damo. When did he start crying?]
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[ she reaches up to wipe her eyes. the back of her glove isn't particularly absorbant, so she winds up pulling it off. there's no need to hide it. he'd felt it. she's ashamed of the weakness, but it's done with.
there's a choked sound in her throat. she's more ashamed of that than anything. ]
It doesn't matter. You don't need to show me. The Supreme Leader will see you turn against her yourself.
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Why don't you just kill me yourself?
[Some of his compassion drains from his face. That's right -- she served the man who sought to split the galaxy in half for the sake of ruling it. She'd clearly had no choice in the matter, when she was a child -- but why now?]
What is this guy paying you, anyway? Power? A cushy seat under his boot?
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god, her hands are shaking. she pulls her glove back on. ]
You saw what I was.
[ she didn't want him to, but he had nonetheless. ]
I was nothing. Nobody. The Supreme Leader has given me something greater than money, greater than power: a purpose, a place in this galaxy. As he will give to you. [ she stretches her fingers into the glove and lowers her hand to her side. ] As much as I would like to see you suffer, it is not Leader Snoke's desire.
Don't mistake me. You will die. Ben Solo will die. And then, whatever is left will kill General Organa.
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Its so absurd that he can't help but scoff a little.]
You're crazy is what you are.
[He adjusts himself as much as he can while strapped down so he can try and make his point more clearly.]
You're not trying to tell me that Supreme Leader Snoke cares about you. As a person. That's not having a place in the galaxy, that's being a lapdog. You could walk away from that now, if you wanted to.
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[ his fervor puzzles her, genuinely. enough that she lets him continue breathing because she wants to see where this goes.
and it's a good question. snoke may not care about her, but neither does any other part of the galaxy. all she would do is lose resources and make enemies — worse, she would finally have to face many of the enemies she had already made for herself, and without the support of the first order at her back this time.
no. he wasn't worth that. what she had here was the best she was ever going to get it. if she couldn't make anyone in the galaxy love her, then at least by and large they would fear her. that would have to do. ]
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[The way he says it makes it seem like the most obvious point he's ever made in his life. That had been part of the reason he and his mother had never quite seen eye to eye. She was always duty above self.
Ben Solo would most likely never be that person. There was too much of his father in him.]
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From what? To do what? What is freedom, alone, worth?
[ not much to her, by the sound of it. ]
We aren't all born with your advantages, Solo. [ she spits the name. ] I was born to be a slave. And I've chosen my master well. My name is known the galaxy wide.
[ but not rey. it's kira that the galaxy knows. ]
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[Yeah, that's weird. Again, there's that pity. Of course she doesn't know what its like to be free. To actually be capable of making choices instead of being under someone's command all the time.
How did he end up in this position, appealing to Snoke's apprentice's humanity that clearly does not exist?]
Last I checked, slaves don't get to choose their masters. But you're right -- what do I know? I'm the son of a senator. I should be sitting pretty on a committee somewhere being handfed meiloorun. Or, since you and your buddy Snoke tore all of that down, maybe I should be the head of an army myself. Yeah?
[He gestures upward, for the purpose of accenting his point.]
-- or, maybe I would be, if legacy actually meant anything. That's the beauty of choice -- Kira, right? Your name is Kira.
[Is he asking because he genuinely wasn't sure, or to make her mad? Hard to tell.]
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no. he had seen something else there in her mind, hadn't he? something that deserved to be locked away, deep enough that no one would ever find it. that girl ... that child. she had to be gone. and he had seen her. ]
Yes. It is.
[ an important reminder not to engage him in this any more. it is a messy business, breaking down a mind, but she will do it. snoke believes that she can do it and (he doesn't know how strong this man-child is in the force, but—) she must.
she will deliver ben solo to him, she will turn him. if she could do this, she had no reason to fear. she will have delivered the supreme leader everything he wanted. the defector. the very resistance. her station — the only thing she's ever had to protect — will be secure. ]
Don't worry. You'll see soon firsthand.
[ she doesn't take her time this time. she shunts herself into his mind. good. let something break. let it all break and then when he tries to pick up the pieces, she will be the one to show him how. perhaps he will serve her, instead of snoke. and she will be the master. ]
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His writhing increases. There is a sense that he might be screaming, if he could breathe, and he could almost feel a physical hook finding his doubt in his family. She drags it to the surface, and tears start to cloud his eyes again.
He remembered the day his mother had contacted him, to tell him about Darth Vader. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so betrayed by secrecy, but it wasn't hard to understand why when he had seen how the senate had reacted to the information. She had never sensed that sort of power within him -- the potential might have been there, for him to be a great Force wielder, if he had ever cared to engage with it.
But he hadn't. He'd turned his uncle away, and ran from it. Stars only knew where he was now -- maybe if he hadn't been so selfish, his father would still be alive.
--there it is. That righteous fury again that has him clenching his fists, eyes slowly sliding open into a glare that bores back into Kira.
You won't win. It rings, clear as a bell, across the bridge of their minds. Even if she succeeded in her task and broke his spirit (he could feel something in his chest and in his mind slowly cracking to pieces), they would never convince him to do their dirty work for them.]
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