To Burn Your Kingdom Down
"I'm afraid you are both my shelter and my storm."
- Unknown
"Ben."
He stares at me with a ghoulish, empty darkness in his eyes and I know that I will die.
His eyes look sad. Disturbed.
I look back at him, angered. Disgusted.
"That name means nothing to me now," he barks at me.
He has black and purple rings under his eyes from lack of sleep. He looks so tired, so careworn. Unsure, so haggard. As if at this young age that we both find ourselves, he has seen and done all the horrors in the galaxy. Blood and pain and death flashes in those dark eyes, and for all but a second I catch a glimpse of the boy I once knew; if just for a moment I see the glimpse of the light that still lives on in him. In those dark eyes, I see myself; I see how he used to look at me, how he used to be. I see everything that I once loved. But that glimpse extinguishes like a fire that needs to be put out. He stands tall here in the woods, the night as dark as his eyes as blinding snow whips past us. He looks proud.
No. Not proud.
Weak.
I look at him and I see what he used to be. I see the boy who taught me everything I know, who helped raise me. I see the boy who I loved and laid with, the boy who knew me better than anybody, the boy who knew me inside and out. I see the boy who once made me believe that there was no dark, only light.
He was my teacher. My friend. He was the person I loved.
Now I see a man who I don't know.
He tries to seem powerful, as if the force is strong in him—and it is, I can feel it pulsing through him like a disease—but it is misplaced, and he knows it. He tries to convince himself that he is strong when he knows he is not. He's vulnerable and he is weak and he is foolish. I can see it in his eyes, I can feel it within him.
He knows that he is weak.
He is an eerie shadow of a memory of Vader, a ghost of another Empire and another time. He knows he will never become what Vader once was.
He stands there, tall, in all black, his fabled, dented mask of Kylo Ren thrown at his feet with exasperation.
"You are not Kylo Ren," I spit out the name like it's poison on my lips. "You are not that mask, you are not the dark side, and you are not Snoke. Don't let him inside of your head, Ben!"
His eyes fill with tears. He knows that I'm right. I sense his fear and he senses mine but neither of us back down. His lightsaber, red and crossed at its handle, is ignited and his stance is defensive. Mine is white and drawn, clutched in my hand.
His upper lip trembles and he tries to blink away the tears. "Ben Solo… Ben Solo is dead. He was weak and foolish."
"You are Ben Solo," I say firmly. "And you always will be, no matter how hard you try to run away from it."
He trembles with anger, shaking his head. His voice escalates, so loud and infuriated that it feels like it goes right through me. "You don't… you don't know my power! You don't understand!"
"I know your power," I shout over the howl of the snow and the wind, my own voice trembling. "Because it is what taught me mine."
The whispering winds between the trees whips his black hair past his intense, exhausted face. He looks at me like he never has before, and my chest aches when he looks at me like that. The pain of the years gone by makes my heart tremble and my stomach churn. His expression is a tragic concoction of heartbreak, bewilderment and insanity.
Anger.
I withdraw my lightsaber and slowly, so slowly, I saunter to him through this blistering, unforgiving snow, in the darkness of this night. The air is cold, absolutely freezing on my flesh. The woods around us are dark and foreboding, and the air smells like death. He looks disturbed, startled—confused, as I get closer. He doesn't expect me getting so close to him. He doesn't expect me to confront him face-to-face.
He's anxious.
Afraid.
I stop in front of him and look up into those dark eyes. He's always been so much taller. And for a minute we just look at each other. I reach out to cup his cheek—he is quick, grabbing my forearm with a death grip before I can touch him. He squeezes my arm and I gasp aloud, staring into his eyes, desperately searching for any mercy that may still linger there.
"Don't touch me," he says, his voice trembling, cracking with the threat of tears. "I'll die if you touch me."
"Which part of you?" I ask. "Kylo Ren?"
Tears squeeze out of his eyes and slip down his cheeks, but he doesn't falter. He disengages his saber. He searches my face, and his grip softens on my forearm and he hesitantly lets me go. Slowly I reach up to his face, cupping his cheek. I missed the warmth of his flesh, the intimidate understanding of each other that no one else has. He presses his cheek into my hand, seeking salvation, seeking strength and seeking comfort. He shuts his eyes.
"I'm being torn apart," he breathes. "I don't know what to do…"
"Leave the darkness," I implore him. "Leave this place. Let go. There is nothing for you here."
He murmurs, "You don't understand. It is never that simple."
"It is," I beg him. "It's that simple. Come back. We miss you."
He doesn't look moved.
"I miss you."
His eyes search mine.
"I know you feel it," I say to him. "The light."
He nods, ever so slightly. Looking down at me with shifting eyes glistening with tears.
I dare to do what I fear will be my last move.
I link my arms around him, hugging him to me, standing on my tip-toes to hug him. He encompasses me in his arms against his warm, brawny body, his arms wrapped around me like a protective cage. And for a second, everything feels balanced. Nothing feels wrong. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and I feel that familiarity and comfort pulsing through my veins. Hot tears run down my face and stain his neck as we are standing there, embraced together in the cold of the winter night. He puts his chin on my head and holds me tighter.
"You only need to let it in," I whisper.
I almost forget what he has become.
I retreat from him and look up at him, and he presses his forehead to mine, gently, almost as if he has forgotten how to be intimate with another, as if he's forgotten how to be affectionate and to relate.
"This isn't you," I beg. "You know it isn't. Stop trying to pretend to be this person. Stop pretending to be Kylo Ren. You don't belong to the Dark Side, Ben! Release yourself to the light."
"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it," he breathes, his voice shaky.
I brush the dark hair out of his face and he closes his eyes at my touch, as if he is mentally trying to grasp onto what we were. "I fear that… I fear that if you choose this I will lose you for good."
He puts his hands on the back of my head and neck and kisses me, briskly taking me into him and I feel nostalgia plague me like an unwelcome visitor. I shut my eyes and tears streak down my cheeks but I feel okay.
Then suddenly, he recoils a bit.
Staring down at me, he is looking at me like I have just killed him, as if he is abhorred at the very sight of me. His brows furrowed and the tears glazing his eyes, his breathing heavy with anger, his hand travels down to my flat abdomen. The feeling of his touch is now foreign to me; funny, how it used to feel natural while being intimate with him.
Not anymore.
His black-gloved hand puts light, tender pressure on my lower stomach. I let out a breathless gasp in surprise of his touch.
"You…" he breathes. "You're…"
He knows before it even begins. He senses it.
"Mia," he murmurs in disbelief.
He looks at my abdomen, his hand still feeling my stomach, his face in utter bewilderment.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't tell you," my voice is trembling.
"You couldn't…" he trails off. "You couldn't tell me?" he then growls, "How long have you known?"
"You don't understand," I said. "You've been so lost, Ben. You've been so far away and I feared that…"
He just stares at me, long and hard.
"It just feared that it wouldn't have been safe for the child if you knew."
He examines me, up and down, the hate in his eyes burning holes in my skin as he glares at me.
"That child will be of the First Order," he shouts. His voice is so growly, so gravely, so full of hate, that I can feel it in my bones. The snow whips past his face, his hair a disarray. "We will raise it and it will follow in the footsteps of its father, and its grandfather before him."
"No," I say firmly, my voice cracking. "I would rather die."
We are both silent for a moment, staring at each other through the trees and blinding snow.
"Then so be it."
"Ben—"
Before I can event finish my sentence, he takes his gentle hand off of my abdomen and flings it into the air. He cups his hand in the air and I feel a tightening grip wrap around my neck, so constricting that I can feel the air being cut off from my trachea. He tightens his force choke on me and I gasp for air. He is so powerful, and his force is strong, stronger than anything I am capable of. I claw at my neck, at the invisible force that has me lifted off the ground, suspended in front of him, near death.
"Ben," I barely choke out. Tears stain my cheeks. "Ben!"
The darkness in his eyes do not falter but I see the guilt flicker across his face, if only for a second. But the guilt, the last flicker of mercy, goes out like a fire on a windy night. The darkness has consumed him and the Ben Solo that I knew is lost. He is more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
I gasp for air, as my throat gets tighter and tighter and tighter and—
and then I woke up.
On the same tattered and careworn cot, in the same decrepit, neglected, shabby cabin in the woods on Takodana.
My prison, casted out of paradise.
Sweat was slick on my brow and my body. Tears were streaking down my face. I'd been crying in my sleep.
I scolded myself for being so weak and I wiped my dirty face with the back of my hand. I laid back, staring at the barely-there stick-made ceiling, watching as the breeze made the trees shake and tremble in its wake. My chest heaved up and down as I tried to calm myself down. I stared up at those trees in between the ceiling and all I could think about was the times when it was him that I was looking up at, staring into those dark eyes. I wished that I could have held onto that feeling in my dream, to be able to relive what it felt like to kiss him again and hold him and tell him that I was there and that the dark would never take him over. The time when I wasn't so alone.
The time where I didn't have to hide from him like a fugitive.
Who am I? I'm a nobody.
A failed jedi. Alone on this planet.
A high price on me to be taken to the First Order. He's searched for me but he'll never find me.
I gently placed a hand on my soon-to-grow abdomen, and the terrifying realization hit me again.
I shut my eyes.
He is the darkness to your light…
(A/N:) just fiddling with a storyline about a girl who once had a relationship with Ben Solo, otherwise known as Kylo Ren, before and while he turned to the Dark Side. Thank you for reading and would love to know what you think! x