@infiltrationtactics // Continued.
It had been hard to hide it, to lock that part of himself away. Harder still to hide it from her, especially as time wore on and what had first developed as a mutual dalliance had become else. Weaving into something more intricate, something harder to define. And when those lips has pressed against his he had felt the weight of that deception, at the perceived slight with every ounce of his being.
He reached out and touched her arm, feeling her pull away from him once again, grasping for her mind at the same time with a gentle touch. A touch he had previously only allowed himself as she had drifted within the embrace of sleep. To see the nightmares within her mind, attempting to steer them towards somewhat happier ends. He wasn’t cruel after all - at least never intentionally so - not to her and not to any under his command. Everything he did was for the future of The First Order, for their Supreme Leader. Everything in his life had been for Snoke, and him alone.
And yet somehow she had still come to mean something more to him.
Something he couldn’t simply meditate away.
She hated him. In this moment he could feel it rolling off of her like a thick fog. And still underneath it he could feel the betrayal, the sadness, the love she felt for him. However twisted and against her nature it had started as, what it had eventually become.
She would battle him, her pride demanded it. But he could at least allow himself to show her that what had been between them had been anything but lies. It has been the one truth he had allowed himself in the years since he had been ordered into silence, Into the life of deception he had cultivated - even to himself.
He grasped her arm once again and pulled her towards him, his other gloved hand reaching up to cup her chin as he pressed a fierce kiss to her lips. Feeling her respond in kind, the lips moving under his own whether consciously or not. He poured his forgiveness into it, and even if she didn’t feel it - hear it as he touched her mind with his - he would tell her as well. With words, with something she would appreciate.
She would not walk away from this - from him.
Not when she could finally see him for what he truly was. What they could be together.