The galaxy opens before the prows of his ships, flung far as an unfurled flag.
It brings no comfort; the galaxy only offers freedom to the almost-free.
And Ben Solo is chained to one past; Kylo Ren to another.
(But everything that Kylo Ren ever was is breaking like a wave.)
.
(He will see red in the hollows of her memory. Red, when his saber flashed to her hand. Red, when the walls shook and Snoke fell. Red, when the blood rose in her cheeks and fell away.
Red, and then nothing at all, because she left him.)
.
His father was all quicksilver and callouses, but he begged like a child at the bridge, at the end.
His uncle was all patience and steady eyes, but he loomed large in darkness, with death between his hands.
They were all supposed to be better than he was, and they never were.
.
The blade struck well below Snoke's heart, if he even had one. And suspended between them, tight as a wire and taut as a prayer, it cracks unevenly, shattered kyber crystal and an answer she will never give.
(Snoke is dead, but not everything dies with him.)
.
He cannot believe that the bond was only deviltry and shadow.
He cannot believe that she did not feel it too, the symmetry and fire.
He cannot believe.
Passion and despair have always been his favorite vices; hesitation his nearest weakness.
.
He could have killed his mother.
He did not.
He could have let his father go.
He did, and he did not.
.
Rey stands closer and kinder to him than any other person has in any count of years. Perhaps Luke did slay a monster that night, or perhaps he slew a boy and watched the monster he had feared climb from the boy's corpse.
But this girl, this Rey, this answer—she tells him she can save him, and she did call him a monster—
She also called him Ben.
.
When he falls, he falls like heartbreak, like dying stars and dust motes—too much in the periphery to be remembered for tragedy. And so, he makes himself burn.
Sparks draw notice, and notice is not comfort, but it is better than nothing.
Better than the blur of sleep, shaken, waking: seeing Luke's face illuminated. Everything that followed was twice as wrong and half as painful.
.
The time for forgiveness is past.
The light is past.
The past will not be his future, and Rey will not be his salvation. He killed Snoke; struck down the demon and the ghost, who wore a face more scarred than his own.
Rey will not be his salvation.
Salvation is for children, for bloodless hands and those who do not hesitate—who have nothing over which to hesitate at all.
Ben Solo is a child; Kylo Ren does not need to be saved.
.
He saw her hair, damp in the rain, felt her impatience and her anger and her curiosity.
Yearned, when her fingers brushed warm against his.
She has nothing left in her eyes, no clarity on her brow, when she closes the door and closes him out.
This is the end, and as ever, he cast the first stone, and the first shadow.
.
Let the past die.
If only it would.
He tasted blood in his mouth when he let his mother live, and his ears rang when her ship was struck anyway. Leia Organa must be immortal; it is the only way he breathes and she breathes, too many planets apart.
He tasted blood in his mouth when Snoke began to tear Rey apart. He was afraid when he realized that Snoke was failing.
Failure is familiar to him; it is the opportunity that follows it that has always been far more dangerous.
.
Rey leaves.
(No clarity.)
She leaves. It should be simple, but he once held his father tenderly in death, and nothing has ever been simple before or since.
.
Everything that Kylo Ren ever was can only hope to rule the galaxy, in blood and ashes, and the breaking of worlds.
Everything that Kylo Ren must be is one future; Ben Solo is another.
(But Ben Solo is afraid.)