Warning for this chapter: suicidal thoughts.

"Kid's gonna get in trouble one day. Every kid does, but with the blood of a scoundrel and a princess in his veins, his defiance will shake the stars." - Lando Calrissian

"ThisKidsNotAlright"
AWOLNATION
(I still don't know what I'm doing)
Fuck


He's a tool. A broken one at that.

That's what it comes down to, he thinks, as the snow falls quietly around him, the flecks of white covering him up little by little.

It's been a bad day. What a fucking understatement that is. He does not seem to be able to follow his master's wishes even when he succeeds. The Supreme Leader said this would be his greatest test yet, and he hadn't failed. He had risen to it, surpassed the obstacle that stood in his way, proved that he'd not be seduced and it should have made him strong.

And yet it's still there. That fucking call. That terrible, all-encompassing call to the light which he can't seem to escape. The Supreme Leader will crush him. Of course. He isn't surprised at the thought. Just like he hadn't been surprised or denied it when Han Solo said that very same thing. His body is a weapon to be wielded, the tool his Master uses to do his glorious bidding until he's used up, dull and broken. And he has served his Master to the best of his abilities, he really has, but he just can't seem to get it right. His actions haven't bolstered his beliefs; Supreme Leader Snoke had promised they would, and the Supreme Leader does not make mistakes. And so, Kylo concludes he is broken. He's done. It's over.

His master will know about his failure, despite his success in fulfilling his task, the same way he knows about the light threatening to pull Kylo under. At least this way the Supreme Leader will think Kylo Ren died gloriously in battle when the signal from the position sensor in his belt winks out.

What the kriffing hell were you thinking?

It isn't the first time he's asked himself what this is all for. The question has been gnawing at him like a bad tooth, a minor irritation that grew into a nightmare before he knew what was happening to him. It's like his Jedi training all over again; that underlying fear that he's following a path not for him. So, what is it all for? Order? Peace?

What use is peace and order if the galaxy has been left in ruin?

The memory of the sudden deafening silence from millions of souls in the wake of Starkiller's red beam overshadows all else in Kylo's mind. He didn't know just how much he could feel of the world around him until a significant part of it was gone, and he can stomach some rare horrors for his grandfather's vision. Kidnapping, torture, massacre...

Patricide.

Fuck. What had he been thinking? Let's poke the old man a little, just to see what happens?

What the hell did you do?

He's at war. There must be sacrifices.

Kriff, how he wishes the old scoundrel had never come to Starkiller Base.

Then his mother would have died in his father's place. Or maybe he'd have felt both of them getting snuffed out as the weapon fired, and not just his father's life siphoning away as his body fell.

What a choice to make.

Maybe if he'd had stayed in bed, things wouldn't have gotten this bad.

Surely...

Kylo shifts in the snow and reaches for his lightsaber with his good hand, biting back a pained cry. The battle fever has faded, and the motion pulls at the wound in his side. Hissing through his teeth, he blinks through the pain and reaches again with a shaking hand, searches with the Force for his weapon.

There's no trace of it. The snow doesn't give it up. He stretches his mind to the edge of the crater that has opened near his feet and finds nothing.

Kriff.

Pulling his arm underneath himself he moves to get up and this time he does scream. Pain rips through his injuries, but what has him falling back to the forest floor, his eyesight whiting out, is the crippling fire that floods his right shoulder.

Shit, shit, shit!

Fuck him. Fuck the Sith and the Jedi alike. But most of all fuck the pipsqueak of a fucking scavenger from the forsaken fucking junkyard excuse of a fucking planet that goes by the fucking name of Jakku.

The pain peaks, and Kylo's breath stops in his throat. For a moment the torment is so furious he almost passes out, and in the seconds of lucidity he curses the treetops above.

When the pain fades into an agonizing burn he's lying on his side, clutching his shoulder and gasping into the snow. Something inside the wound has gone terribly wrong. Through the grace of his training he has learned to draw power from pain, but damn it! She messed him up good. Stabbed and sliced him open worse than any opponent has ever managed, all without a lick of Force training. Out of all the things that have gone wrong over the past few days, his inability to hide his weakness from the Supreme Leader, the total annihilation of the Hosnian system, Han Solo dying for nothing, and the girl refusing him, this is what has him sobbing for the first time in years. His arm, the one he wields his lightsaber with, won't fucking move.

She really did a number on him, this scavenger girl, this desert rat, standing in the light, but with so much rage underneath her skin. This no one, with so much potential and power she could level entire worlds on her own, and she doesn't even know it. A girl with such hunger, who could become awe-inspiring with the right guidance, and she'd much rather leave him for a traitorous stormtrooper than follow Kylo Ren into greatness. It's as if the Force itself conjured up the perfect person, someone who could understand his burden, only to snatch her away and spit in his face as it does so.

Getting out of bed was definitely a colossal mistake.

Lying there in the freezing snow, still breathing heavily from pain and exertion, he comes to the conclusion that the universe has decided to screw him over.

So...

Screw the universe right back.

He's done. He's so fucking done with it all he could combust. If this is the end of Starkiller Base, why not him? There's nothing left. The Supreme Leader will dispose of him, if not now then eventually, and if Kylo had any delusions of going 'home' before he stabbed the General's husband, there's certainly none of that left now. What remains of the Republic will grant him a swift execution or a lifetime's worth of imprisonment.

And what of Leia Organa?

Well.

Her son is dead isn't he?

There's no future for him outside his Master's apprenticeship. He has no means build a new organization with, one that could succeed where the First Order fails. Kriff, his own training isn't even finished yet. What can he do that the Supreme Leader can't?

The stars above fade for a moment as a sharp light cuts through the treetops. The familiar whine of a spaceship reaches him just before the silhouette of it flashes across the sky and booms out of the planet's gravity well. Kylo knows, with only a slight sting of disappointment and regret, maybe even some relief, that the Millennium Falcon is going back to the Resistance.

He could have been on that ship.

Han Solo could have been on that ship.

Snow piles around his ears now, falls into his eyes in thick, wet patches. The planet hasn't complained of its imminent destruction for a while now, and the only sound is the faint wind rustling the trees. It's peaceful, and he realizes that what he's feeling is complete and utter calm.

Strange.

(Ben! The name ricochets off the walls of the large chamber. Ben is dead. There's nothing for you here, so just go. Run. Why won't you run?)

He's really kriffing cold.

Something warps. The force ripples, a veil is brushed aside just outside of his peripheral vision, and all of a sudden Kylo's nerves stand on edge. He can't explain it, because he doesn't even remotely understand it.

It's like seeing someone in the corner of one's eyes only to turn and find that it is just a shadow. Just his mind playing tricks on him.

Only it's not a trick. All of a sudden he's no longer alone in the forest.

"Get up."

The effect is not unlike the way the Supreme Leader will sometimes speak to him through the Force if the distance between them is short enough. But the Supreme Leader isn't here; Kylo would have felt it. This presence is nothing he has ever known before. The tone is stern, but calm. Somehow familiar and at the same time not.

"Get up," it repeats.

Kylo turns his head towards the voice, and fails that simple act by proxy as the voice doesn't come from anywhere but inside his own mind. "Who's there?"

"Never mind who's there. You need to get up now."

Kylo considers the presence for a bewildering moment, trying to remember if blood loss causes hallucinations. He remembers he's about to die, and decides it's unimportant. "No."

"No?"

"No."

A pause.

"Why not?"

"Why?"

This person, whoever they are, does a very good job of gesturing wildly to the crumbling surroundings for something without visible arms, if it has any at all.

"This planet is falling apart," it exclaims.

"Really?" Kylo says. "Are you sure?"

"You'll get crushed!"

"That's the point!" Kylo scowls at nothing. He's been bleeding for the better part of the last, what, twenty minutes? How long since he stood on that bridge, facing Han Solo for the last time? The fall had lasted an eternity. The moment after, when he came to the realization that the old man was irrevocably gone, took at least two.

Kylo sniffs, and cringes at how wet his sniveling sounds. His throat hurts like he's been wounded there too, and his eyes sting. He wipes at his face with his good hand. "What does it matter anyway? he croaks.

"It does not," the voice says. "Or I should say it does not to me at least."

Right.

"Regardless, it matters to the living that you live."

Shifting his head to the other side, Kylo tries to catch the owner of the voice. It doesn't help much; there's no one there. "Who are you?"

"I told you never mind – oh, kriffing hell. Will it get you up if I told you?"

It won't, but that doesn't mean Kylo's curiosity hasn't spiked. "Sure."

"I'm Anakin Skywalker, your grandfather."

Kylo scoffs. "Bantha fodder."

The presence cocks its nonexistent head. "How so?"

"I've talked to my grandfather before. I know his signature. You're not Darth Vader."

"My mother named me Anakin," the voice corrects, sounding irritated. "It's the name my friends knew me by and that's who, – did you just say I once spoke to you?"

"My grandfather did." Kylo's never told that to anyone except the Supreme Leader, but hell, what does it matter now?

"Huh."

"What?"

"That explains a great deal."

"Explains what?"

"How the son of a rogue smuggler finds himself in the clutches of a Dark Lord. I would have thought there'd be too much of Han Solo in you, to want to live your life under the tyranny of another, Ben Organa-Solo."

"Don't say that name."

"Fine, fine. Then don't call me Darth Vader."

The seething indignity of being scolded pushes aside his irritation. He's the Master of the Knights of Ren; that ought to count for something. "The Supreme Leader is wise." The words are a mantra; he does it a disservice by spitting it out. "And you're not my, –"

"I tell you what. How about you get yourself off this rock and I'll prove it to you?"

Nonexistent hands spread in an offering. A deal? Kylo quickly weighs the prospect of oblivion versus a future of more failure and pain. He stays put.

The presence huffs. "You're really not getting up, are you?"

"No."

"Why did I think this would be easy?" it mumbles, and though its words ring in Kylo's head he knows it's speaking to itself. "Fine. See what I care? Not like we can't still talk when you're dead. Then you'll know who I am." The presence speaks with the kind of faux finality even a child can recognize as bait, and Kylo distinctly senses the ghost turning its back on him.

"It won't matter," Kylo tells it, and its focus comes back to him. "I don't care who you are, I'm not going back. It ends here."

The ground rumbles. Violent tremors shake through it; juggernauts fighting to escape a black hole. Across the newly opened canyon a half a dozen trees breaks apart from the rest of the forest and sinks from view with the sound of rock grinding against rock.

There are eyes on Kylo, thought he can't see them. His shoulder and side, as well as the burn from where the traitor cut him, throbs badly. The snow around the bowcaster wound has turned dark; the blood cooling quickly as it exits his body. For a long while there's only silence from the ghost. Kylo feels himself being studied intently, and without the ability to turn his face away he closes his eyes, tries to meditate to dampen his aches. There's no more need for pain, and besides, he's so tired of it.

"May I?" Although Kylo isn't looking he knows the ghost indicates the ground besides him.

"Do whatever you like," he says. " I don't care."

There is no body to flatten the snow to Kylo's left, but he still feels something settling there in the Force, crossing its nonexistent ankles and folding its nonexistent hands on its nonexistent chest. How come he has such clear impressions of what it's doing, yet he cannot see it?

"I'm going to be dead for this," the ghost grumbles, and then corrects itself. "Dead-er."

"By whose hand?" Kylo asks. Small talk. Why is he making small talk? He hates small talk.

"Someone with a strong right hook."

The air fills with a sound like thunder followed by a long, deep, gravelly moan. That's the sound, Kylo thinks, of a dying Leviathan. An endless creature out of time, out of his childhood books. His heart thuds at his ribs, and he sweats despite the cold. The ghost doesn't even flinch.

"Nothing like imminent death to loosen your tongue," it says. "So tell me. How did you end up becoming Kylo of the Knights of Ren?"

Another bouldering groan shakes the earth. This time, Kylo jerks from the noise, his breathing slightly elevated. "The Supreme Leader is wise," he repeats without thinking.

"Don't give me that," the ghost says. "I know a lie when I hear one. What's the truth?"

There'd always been something. A glitch in the way Kylo saw the world. He knew people. He knew they communicated from the other side of the glass wall, but he could never quite grasp what they were saying. He always seemed to be hearing them from across a vast fields of information; like capsules of knowledge meant to be unlocked were hidden in their words, but he didn't have the key. As a child, he carved the words of the adults around him onto the inside of his skull so he could scavenge them for answers later, because he could never understand what it was they wanted from him. Then there was the fun of watching their confusion and disappointment whenever hints of his real self slipped out.

The revelation of his true heritage, as devastating as it had been in the beginning, had been a gift: To realize that it wasn't he who didn't seem to think the way other people did, but they who didn't think like him. The answer had been hidden from him by the people who should have loved him. So he'd cut those bonds, and followed his true path under the guidance of someone who understood, the Supreme Leader.

"Peculiar," the ghost muses, "it wasn't like that for me." Kylo frowns, because out loud he has said nothing. But before he can mention it the ghost goes on. "I was offered a way to save my family," it says with quiet regret.

Kylo hasn't bought into the claim that he's talking to his own grandfather just yet. The legends speak of a man with a great vision of a galaxy in order, remade in the image of peace, a man with the iron will and means to make it happen. A petty thing like family couldn't be the reason he turned to the dark. It doesn't make sense. What about power?

Still...

"That's how you see it," the ghost says. "I held the life of my own son in my hands, half of what was left in this universe after my wife, and you think I should have let him die for some ill-conceived version of galactic peace. No. I already knew what loss by my own hands felt like. It's a mistake you won't make twice, Kylo Ren, mark my words."

Nor does it seem that he'll get the chance to, because again, the ground gives an earsplitting roar and shakes, this time so violently it throws Kylo around like dice in a cup. His shoulder screams, and he thinks he might be screaming too, because the agony is so blinding he can't be sure. And for a fraction of a second he senses from somewhere far away, light-years already, someone else's signature, a heartbeat seeking out his own mind's constant thrum.

The next second it stops; the noise, the shaking as well as the pain. Kylo lies panting as warmth floods his shoulder, radiating from a hand he can't see. His body could float with the sudden relief.

"I think we've had enough of that," the ghost says, sounding somehow older, and strangely tired. Kylo has a question on his tongue, but something diverts the ghost's attention.

"There's a shuttle," it remarks. "Coming this way. Six stormtroopers and some young general. He seems familiar. A relative of Commandant Hux, I presume judging by the, – Hey. Hey! What are you doing?"

Hux.

So the Supreme Leader has ordered that slime-ball to come and pick up his apprentice. The snotty git must be besides himself with indignity for being given such a task. Regardless of what feelings the general has on the matter, Kylo is not about to give the ugly brat the satisfaction of finding him carved up and half dead.

"I'm getting up." Kylo scuffles around and slips in the snow with his one working hand, his limbs stiff from the cold, but no longer hurting.

"What?" the ghost exclaims. "Why? I mean excellent! But why?"

"I told you. I'm not going back, and that shuttle is here to get me." With difficulty Kylo's on his feet and takes off, limping at first, then running as his limbs warm up. Whatever the ghost did to him, it works like bacta applied to his brain stem. He can't feel a thing. He has to clutch his right arm to his chest to keep it from flapping around.

He follows the boiling wound in the earth that had separated him from the scavenger, probably saving his life in the process. Logically, he should be throwing himself into the fiery pit and not making his way along it, but now that he's running he's really running, swerving between the trees like he once did in the forests of his childhood, fighting imaginary battles alongside kids whose names he can no longer remember, on a planet that perished less than a day ago. It would be potentially exhilarating if it wasn't so terrifying.

"They're changing course," the ghost says, still there in his mind, not sounding at all tired. "They're still following you."

Damnit. The position sensor. Kylo's still carrying it.

He skids, grappling with his belt where the device is hidden inside. He fumbles with his only useful hand and gets it unbuckled only to have it slip in his frozen hand when he tugs at it. It pulls on the fabric where it has been sewn to the back of his tunic, and try as he might Kylo doesn't have the strength left in his fingers to rip it off. Someone in the First Order must have put stock in keeping him on a tight leash, and Kylo wouldn't put it past him that this someone is General Hux.

That asshole.

He has to stop to yank his tunic over his head, but with only the help of one working arm it catches at his neck, choking him. Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren found dead on Starkiller base. Cause of death: self strangulation by a piece of fucking cloth.

Great.

"Oh, for the sake of the Maker give it here." A sharp tug, and the tunic is gone. The freezing air goes straight through Kylo's sweat-dampened under-layers, and he's left shivering. The scavenger girl had been bare shouldered, dressed for a desert's climate, not Starkiller. He doesn't get much time to further contemplate how cold she must have been, because the lights cut through the trees and then Kylo's moving again, away from the shuttle, away from that sour-faced General Hux, and away from what has been his life for the last seven years.

"This way." The ghost indicates a path that leads away from the burning crack in the ground. Kylo stumbles mindlessly through the snow, and falls on his face when another tremor shakes the planet.

He's going to die here.

That's just his kriffing luck.

He gets to his feet and continues. His fingers and toes are ice now, his side sticky with blood, and twice he comes to a halt, leaning against a tree because his vision keeps blacking out. The second time he sinks to one knee, heaving for breath. His legs are duracrete, and they're shaking. Exhaustion had already taken him before Hux's shuttle arrived. He can't run much longer.

"Just a little further," the ghost says, sounding agitated but resolute.

Between the trees a clunky, black, angular shape appears, materializing into a downed shuttle as Kylo trudges closer. Crashed, he thinks, useless. Behind him lights filter through the forest again and are gone.

"No. Just a happy landing." If Kylo had the energy to spare he would have rolled his eyes at the joke. The ghost is right though, the shuttle appears to have had more of a rough landing than a crash.

He shambles inside. Two dead stormtroopers greet him. The one in the pilot's seat has a blaster stuck to its dangling, lifeless hand, while the weapon of the other one lies not far from its body as if dropped when the trooper fell. It's a strange scene, not quite right. They had been facing each other, but why? Then it hits Kylo that he has just walked in on what is the aftermath of an attempted treason against the First Order. These two killed each other, because one tried to leave.

Good for you, traitor. Good for you. Hysterical laughter sits in Kylo's chest, but he has enough control to hold it back.

He doesn't get to the controls, because the next second the floor moves and Kylo is thrown sideways. His head collides hard with the bulkhead. All the air leaves him at the impact, and though he lands on his feet he doesn't have the strength to keep himself standing. He slumps down onto his ass, his head swimming. Ones, twice, he pushes his legs underneath himself to get up, but the trek has worn him out.

Kylo's eyelids fall heavily, his body has turned numb, and his head hangs without his permission. Something warm and wet creeps down from his hairline and over his cheek. His hands lie limply in his lap. Kylo commands them to make fists, and watches as only his left digits weakly curl and uncurl, fingertips not even making contact with the palm. He can't even muster up the energy to figure out how he feels about that.

Maybe this isn't so bad. He could rest here, just for a bit. A year or two perhaps, or forever, like his father before him.

He's just so kriffing tired.

The shuttle nudges gently, and a faraway hum fills the tight space, soothing him. Something falls on Kylo, some sort of fabric, and though it's coarse, it's warm, and he pulls it over his shoulders with his numb fingers. The familiar feeling of low aerial flight provides a rocking motion, and for a moment his blood-deprived brain takes him back to the Millennium Falcon, to the alcove he'd taken for his own, stuffed with a mattress, pillows and a blanket; his plastic rebels and troopers; his books. In that space he'd made for himself he'd ones slept, and had nightmares about this day. About Kylo Ren and Han Solo standing together on a bridge. One moment his father was there, then next he wasn't, and Ben had known this was the future and that it was his adult self behind that mask. No amount of comfort could pacify a child who knew he would one day kill his own father.

He wishes it didn't have to happen, he really does, but the dark demands sacrifices, and -

That's a lie, his fuzzy brain argues. That's complete crap and you know it.

Is it?

He can't see how.

In its last moments of lucidity his mind snarls on something nearly intangible, a thought, an idea. It's a good thought, it really is. He'll consider it after he's had some sleep. When he's rested…. When he wakes up... He'll consider it.

He will...


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