Every night, Kylo wakes up with a jolt.
He sits upright in bed, in the sterile blue lamplight, cold sweat trickling down his brow.
When he was younger, he used to dream of his old master...
Luke.
Towering over his bed, ignited lightsaber in hand—ready to strike Kylo down.
For years, Kylo used to dream of every face—every face of every Jedi he had killed that day. They were young—some of them defenseless. It was dark, and his tears made him blind—he could hardly tell them apart from the padawans that used to ridicule and tease him mercilessly—the padawans that, once word got out of Ben's true heritage, swore they would duel him to the death, for everything Vader had done to the galaxy. It didn't matter if those young men deserved Kylo's hatred. It didn't matter that a voice whispered through his skull as he murdered them, "they would have done the same to you." Their faces haunted his dreams all the same.
The nightmares he hated most, though, were that of his parents. He missed them. He hated them. For years, he secretly hoped that they'd come for him. He wished them dead. He wished they'd leave him be. In sleep, they'd come to him, and try to win him back.
Then one day, it happened. His father came, just like in his dreams. Only in his dreams...the argument ended in an embrace.
It was something he hid from Snoke. It was the dream he always hated the most because waking it left a crushing pain in his chest. The dream did not reflect reality.
After the pain-filled stroke that ended Han, a new nightmare plagued Kylo for ten consecutive nights. It robbed Kylo of sleep. Every night, the look in his father's face, as he stroked his son's cheek and the light went out in his eyes...
It split his spirit in two—shook him to his core.
He thought...
Surely, nothing could shake him...
Twist him...
Turn his world upside down...
NOTHING—
Nothing could break him apart, further still—
And yet.
It happened.
A comet had streaked across his empty sky.
A flame had sparked inside his chest...
The moment she whispered his name...
"Ben."
The light.
Calling.
Beckoning...
To him.
Come.
Come...
He reached out...
Trembling, he touched the tips of her fingers with his. Skin against skin. A gentle touch, was all it was.
But his spirit shook, struck by a lightning bolt that set his heart ablaze.
When the embers rained down, all around him...
When tears filled their eyes, and she reached for the saber, refusing his hand—
The nightmare flashed before his eyes.
Luke.
Ignited lightsaber in hand.
Rey.
Reaching for the blade...
...to strike him down.
His burning heart...crashed. It shattered, splintered further than before...
The day that he struck down Snoke. The day that he became...the Supreme Leader.
Ever since that day, Kylo dreams of one thing only—
A kiss.
A kiss...that never happened.
Two hearts beating, beneath the stars, beside a golden fire, hands entwined, the rest of the world a blur...
It's only Rey.
And Ben.
And the kiss they will never share.
It haunts him. It drives him mad. He prays to Vader, but his grandfather's voice has left him. So has Snoke's. All he's left with is the cold, and the emptiness of his bleak, dark solitude.
The scar he sees in the mirror only reminds him of the kiss they never shared.
A kiss they'll share...
Only in dreams. As they clasp hands, and fly far, far away together...
Across the sea of stars.