She is older now. Small and shriveled like dried out fruit, like a carcass left in the desert. It is hard to imagine that he was birthed from such a body. She raises her chin defiantly, tightens her lips so that every line on her face is exaggerated.
"You will do me the courtesy of removing your mask."
"As you wish," he says. The helmet unlocks with a hiss. He sees the tension ebb and flow across her aged flesh, feels the play of emotions that ripple through the Force. He is not the boy she neglected or the man who killed her lover. He is something else, evolved higher. Two scars now cross his face like clashing sabers, like the X of a kiss. One battle lost and one victorious. Girl and monster (master); Kylo Ren is the result. He is their child more than the shrunken woman's before him.
"Does my appearance bother you?"
"No. You look like you got what you wanted."
Not yet, he thinks. "I come in peace." He smiles. The Force flares beneath his skin and through the dry earth of this planet and its constant violet storm clouds above. They had agreed to meet on neutral ground to negotiate a settlement. There is no such thing as neutral ground. There is no such thing as balance. Everything is in flux, an ever-shifting spectrum between the powerless and the powerful. Kylo Ren feels strong but he does not feel complete.
"Speak plainly," she says, crossing her arms as if to chide him twenty years too late, "and do not use euphemisms like peace. What do you want?"
Everything. The rush of blood and taste of death, the heat from a thousand exploding stars; the sense of a trillion lives at his fingertips; to feel their essence and all that pain and elation, to breathe in the Force and hold it all inside his chest. The galaxy and all the galaxies that came before it; to know it all and be ignorant at once. To sing and to scream. Everything and just one thing, the same thing, a simple thing:
"Her."
His mother shakes her head.
"Give her to me and I will leave you to your petty squabbles. You may keep all you have and believe it to be yours because you think you have resisted. I have spared you," he spits. "I have shown you mercy. Now I demand you show me the same courtesy that you have asked of me."
"I cannot—"
"It is not for you to decide." He can feel her. The Force roars like thunder in his head and his smile stretches wide. "She has made her decision."
Break your word—yes my darling—and I will kill you in your sleep.
fill: silent vows
She is older now. Small and shriveled like dried out fruit, like a carcass left in the desert. It is hard to imagine that he was birthed from such a body. She raises her chin defiantly, tightens her lips so that every line on her face is exaggerated.
"You will do me the courtesy of removing your mask."
"As you wish," he says. The helmet unlocks with a hiss. He sees the tension ebb and flow across her aged flesh, feels the play of emotions that ripple through the Force. He is not the boy she neglected or the man who killed her lover. He is something else, evolved higher. Two scars now cross his face like clashing sabers, like the X of a kiss. One battle lost and one victorious. Girl and monster (master); Kylo Ren is the result. He is their child more than the shrunken woman's before him.
"Does my appearance bother you?"
"No. You look like you got what you wanted."
Not yet, he thinks. "I come in peace." He smiles. The Force flares beneath his skin and through the dry earth of this planet and its constant violet storm clouds above. They had agreed to meet on neutral ground to negotiate a settlement. There is no such thing as neutral ground. There is no such thing as balance. Everything is in flux, an ever-shifting spectrum between the powerless and the powerful. Kylo Ren feels strong but he does not feel complete.
"Speak plainly," she says, crossing her arms as if to chide him twenty years too late, "and do not use euphemisms like peace. What do you want?"
Everything. The rush of blood and taste of death, the heat from a thousand exploding stars; the sense of a trillion lives at his fingertips; to feel their essence and all that pain and elation, to breathe in the Force and hold it all inside his chest. The galaxy and all the galaxies that came before it; to know it all and be ignorant at once. To sing and to scream. Everything and just one thing, the same thing, a simple thing:
"Her."
His mother shakes her head.
"Give her to me and I will leave you to your petty squabbles. You may keep all you have and believe it to be yours because you think you have resisted. I have spared you," he spits. "I have shown you mercy. Now I demand you show me the same courtesy that you have asked of me."
"I cannot—"
"It is not for you to decide." He can feel her. The Force roars like thunder in his head and his smile stretches wide. "She has made her decision."
Break your word—yes my darling—and I will kill you in your sleep.