old drabble dump for organizational purposes.
It wanted so sorely to bubble to the surface. It came not from the dead boy, who still haunted from within his chest and rattled his ribs like a cage, but from somewhere far more familiar, more urgent. Help. But how– who would– no, not the man who allowed him to rest here, pillowed on his thigh and curled away from what plagued him, the steady rot of his mind no one cared to notice. Not Relius.
He could only give him so much. These snatches of quietude and solace. The gentle, rhythmic hand combing through his hair, the illusion of compassion. His body. Help me, he’d say if he knew to. If he could.
The ambush would ultimately be successful; all he had to do was die. What was left of the contingent lay scattered about, his own Knights and a smattering of elite troopers, no less than twenty all told. Cowards.
The emperor, one had choked before begging again for his own life. The emperor ordered it. Something warm had begun to drip on the back of his neck. Obediently he fell to his knees, tilted forward, and collapsed, letting his breath free itself from his lungs. The pain had stopped registering. Even the betrayal felt distant, as if it’d happened to someone else. Someone who knew why.
Golden laurels set in copper hair. Brightest green, and the rarest smile of them all.
How ironic that the last of Kylo Ren’s emotions would be love.
Silence. Neither the constant thrum of machinery nor the odd, reverberating clangs that sometimes punctuated it could be heard here, and Kylo Ren found it to be at once peaceful and disconcerting. This planet was, as of yet, untouched by sentient hands, peppered only by mountains and forests and blanketed in snow by a sky that never ceased to produce it.
He’d never seen snow before. Luckily, his wonder was easily hid beneath his mask.
Twin pairs of footprints trailed behind them as he and the General walked, surveying what was to be their new home and greatest weapon. Though their presence here wasn’t required, it went unspoken that any length of time spent off the Finalizer was worth the trip, especially for Kylo Ren. He had not been raised to appreciate the confines of a ship the way Hux had. Although he’d been largely successful in scrubbing his childhood from memory, images of endless oceans and jagged peaks still resurfaced from time to time. Quiet thickets, much like…
“Ren.” The steady crunch of Hux’s boots had ceased. Kylo stopped as well, eyes lifted to a faraway summit. “I wish to make something clear.”
This was a conversation he thought they’d already had; Hux was surely about to remind him that marks were not to be left above his collar and that there would be consequences for future transgressions. Kylo turned, leveling his metal gaze at a man who had no such luxury as anonymity. Snowflakes had begun to collect on copper lashes and a flush colored the General’s pallid cheeks. “Is that so.”
Business as always, Hux looked severe. “You will not interfere with this undertaking. Starkiller will take administrative priority over your frivolous personal operations for the duration of its construction.”
“It’s not up to you,” Kylo took satisfaction in retorting. He thought he saw Hux’s lips press into a thin line.
“You will help see to its completion. And when it is completed, I expect to see you act in its best interest.” Empty threats lined the General’s words, as always. A childish eyeroll was, thankfully, hidden from sight.
Their walk resumed, two figures in a world of cool shadow and dark boughs. Perhaps Hux wouldn’t notice as Kylo subtly snapped a sprig from a low branch, tucking it into his robe.
“Of course, General. Of course.”
The General’s collarbones are like fine china, and they mark so well. All of him does; pale skin and a dusting of freckles never goes unbroken for long, for here and there is the evidence that the Knight has been here, has claimed this as territory. Lavender blooms freshly under his hands and crimson streaks betray where his teeth have been, while yellowing bands on the General’s wrists in the shape of long fingers speak of previous visits. There’s nothing that can be done but wait out the storm and collect the pieces afterwards.
“A gift, General?” Kylo Ren took the man’s jaw in his gloved hand, leant in to peer at the prisoner’s eyes through his mask with the scrutiny one affords a precious gem. Terrified but restrained, Kylo found a pliant mind upon which to practice the finer aspects of his power, and this pleased him. Whatever response Hux might’ve had went unheard. Kylo Ren’s attention on the subject grew absolute, the first stirrings of darkness pooling unseen at fingertips still lingering on the man’s jaw as the Force poured into him. The reaction was immediate: pain contorted his features and strangled groans slipped between his teeth, straining against a power he had no defense against; Kylo Ren was enthralled, navigating, sifting through information he had no use for. The man screamed, thrashing against his restraints.
He was getting better. Instead of a bog of panic — or through it, rather — Kylo found thought, spacecraft lining a strip of duracrete in a forest, a pretty woman, Resistance leaders gathered around a dim command table…
The subject’s eyes rolled wildly and a final, keening shriek left him before he slumped and his signature disappeared from the Force. Latently, once the initial surge of rage had abated, he realized he’d crushed the man’s jaw. He wiped blood and spittle from his glove on the man’s own shirt.
“Clean this up.” Kylo swept past the guard, out of the interrogation room, and past Hux. It took him little time to disappear entirely.
Everything is steeped in shadow. The darkness clutches at him even in sleep, warm and enveloping, reassuring that the light cannot penetrate it. He knows what to expect of dreams like this. He’ll receive a morsel, a glimpse of things that may or may not occur, the rise and fall of people and regimes and his own flickering soul. Ben Solo is dead, but the dreams of him and his obsolete future will not cease. Ghosts are the loudest sort of company.
Tonight, however, Kylo Ren sees the General. He’s on his knees, facing away with his head bowed so deeply the freckled constellations at his nape are visible just above a pressed collar. Shapes extract themselves from the shadows and Kylo’s surprised to see that they look like people, long and ragged like shreds of cloth and brandishing blades of a colorless fire that drips from their fingers. Hux doesn’t move, even as they descend upon him with quiet murmurs of approval and affection, and Kylo can’t see him, can’t approach…
Whether the figures ultimately retreat or dissipate isn’t clear, but all that’s left of General Hux when Kylo sees him again is a tidy pile ash and bone and a man standing amidst it that looks precisely like himself, victorious, with Hux’s greatcoat draped neatly over his shoulders.
Kylo Ren wakes in a cold sweat for the first time in years.
“And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place? To make them confess.”
“Lord Ren, th-there are no others.” The man looked ready to perish on the spot, and Kylo might’ve indulged him, had the Knight not already been responsible for creating three bodies in the span of an hour. Interrogation techniques having failed on what few Resistance prisoners their last skirmish had yielded, Kylo Ren had been given free rein to practice his arts upon them, though results were less than spectacular; the contents of a mind were scattered, further frayed by panic and pain and terribly fragile. He’d killed the first by accident, cleaving her consciousness in two with his impatience. The second succumbed to an aneurysm, and the third became a vegetable under his ministrations. Snapping his neck had been a merciful death.
Of all the techniques he’d learned, this proved most difficult– and it was infuriating. Power eddied around him, unused and frustrated. Kylo Ren needed to be a scalpel, yet he was still a bludgeon, practiced only in murder and pain. Mechanical breathing quickened with the first brush of anger. “Leave.” The officer did, and quickly, shuffling aside to make way as two stormtroopers entered to drag the final corpse from the little room.
Kylo Ren was thus left alone to eye the empty gurney at the room’s center and contemplate his own failure.
