The vastness of space is a wonder. The cold black has a way of sucking the truth out of anyone. Like a cleansing fire, the void burns to the center of your soul and tears away the layers of camouflaged lies laid upon you like armor. Without the constructed walls of excuses and reasons, you see your own heart in a way that you've never known. Gone with the atmosphere are the previously validated excuses of bloodlines and poorly aimed blame at parentage. Alone with the silence, you have no choice but to confront your reality.
Kneeling on the floor in his room, Ben Solo is beginning to confront the reality of Kylo Ren. Completely alone, he is able to admit to his own heart that this is not where his path was truly meant to lead. He had been searching for a place to belong. Too light to belong to Snoke, too dark to belong truly with his family. He had thrown balance to the wind and listened to what he believed was his grandfather speaking to him. He had burned his whole life down and molded the ashes into something akin to a fragile sandcastle of lies and pretending. He was sure that the truth was coming. So many times, his loyalty to the dark had been tested. And each time, he had pretended to give himself fully to the yawning maw of the dark. He had murdered a whole village recently, simply to prove that he was fully committed. But the screams still echoed in his ears, the reverberation through the Force felt like it was splitting his bones in half. Deep inside he knew he didn't belong here, he knew he was a boy pretending at darkness and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he was found out. He shuddered inside at the death he knew would be dealt to him.
Suddenly unable to breathe, Ben removes the mask over his face and throws it across the room. Indulging in a gulp of air, Ben folds his hands over his face and screams silently. The bridges he had burned, the life he had burned, guaranteed that if he could get out of the reach of the First Order, the Resistance would be hot on his tail. To any logical creature, death could be the only foreseen outcome. But a creature facing its own demise is anything but logical. Bens dreams were filled with memories of before his leap, before his apparent corruption. Days spent in the sun, nights filled with laughter, before the dark voice started whispering from the corners. Before Uncle Luke started noticing little things, a glance, aggression, lies and cover ups. But Luke hadn't said anything to anyone, hoping that he was not seeing what he was seeing. Hoping that the boy could fight it on his own as Luke himself had done and become stronger for it. He hadn't seen the desperation in Bens eyes, the struggle within his soul. But everyone had watched him fall from the light, heaving himself into his own personal hell.
The perceived failings of his family fed into the anger that fueled his fall to the dark. His mothers inability to spend time with her family because her political leanings prevented her from it. His fathers inability to be a role model, and his uncles blindness to his plight made him feel that no one cared for him. It made it all too easy to let it all go and embrace his grandfathers unfulfilled legacy. He knows in his soul that is isn't his parents fault or his uncles, but his own weakness that he left unaddressed for far too long. Something in him latched on to Darth Vaders broken story and he followed it too far down the rabbit hole and now he didn't know how to get home. He was suddenly scared and truly feeling lone for the first time in a long, long time.
A comm link beeped and forced him to retreat from his reverie. "Master Ren, we are approaching Takodana. We are expecting Resistance forces presently." a voice spoke crisply and Ben shook the remainder of the thoughts from his head and slapped his mask back onto his face.
"Understood, proceed and I will be with you momentarily." Kylo Ren replied into the internal comm unit and raised himself from the kneeling position he had been in. He clipped his lightsaber back onto his belt and straightened his robes. Soon, he would disembark and kill more people, in order to prove his loyalty and prolong his life another day. The target was the BB-8 droid that had eluded them to this point, running away with a girl and a failed stormtrooper. The droid had a piece of the map that lead to Luke Skywalker. Only a few more bridges to burn before maybe he would wake up and really be Kylo Ren and not Ben Solo any more. If he burned his entire life down and stomped on the ashes, maybe he would really be as dark and powerful as his grandfather, maybe he would live up to Snokes hopes for him. Maybe one morning, the screams would empower him instead of crippling him.
As he left the room and headed towards the rest of the invasion force, he thought that maybe if he killed everything in him that was light, everyone in him that was light, then he would truly be able to give himself to the dark and not so afraid. Kylo smiled under the mask and chuckled darkly. Only three more "bridges" to burn.