I saw weakness, I watched you carve it out

Another feeling you'd rather live without

Too often he felt this. It was a pull, like a rope tied around his neck yanking him forward and breathless into a dark void. Since he was young, he'd felt it. The noose only grew tighter over the years, kept him trying to scream yet unable to breathe, but never tight enough for him to die. Even as he lay awake, staring up at the dark ceiling, thinking over everything he had done. He replayed the struggle between himself and Rey for her saber. The force of it breaking had knocked him unconscious. Rey could have killed him then. Why hadn't she?

"Ben…"

Clouds up above, clouds in your head

Foreshadowing a cold, dark end

They'll let you live

But you won't win

They only want

What you can't give

He startled, his saber flew into his hand with the practice of a master.

Kylo Ren looked around, seeing no one in his chambers to have called his name. He stood up from his bed, adjusted the band of his pants. He walked around to the living quarters, and saw him.

Clear as day, Han Solo sat on his couch, staring at his son with a smile.

"Get out of here," Kylo breathed angrily, the familiar rage filling him quickly. Han continued to smile, the same loving way he had always smiled at his only son. It only served to further fuel Kylo's rage.

"I killed you. You are dead. Go, and be dead."

When it became clear as it did every time he appeared that Han wasn't leaving, Kylo chose to leave instead. He went into the kitchen, his bare feet stomping along the dark tile.

"You know I will never leave you, Ben."

He despised his father calling him Ben. The only person he ever allowed the privilege was her. And from anyone else, it only served to disconnect him further from that life.

"I love you, son."

Kylo reached out for a glass from the cupboard, and when Han's words reached him, he let the glass fall to the ground, shards spilling across his feet and small cuts running droplets of blood between his toes. He didn't feel that kind of pain anymore. Only the kind words caused. The deep, aching shame that he never could completely dismiss from his heart.

"I am not your son anymore, Han Solo. I am not subject to love."

Han was now in the kitchen with Kylo, his boots crunched through the glass around him. Han's hand was warm on his son's back, and Kylo didn't shrug him away. Touch was so strange, so foreign, to Kylo. No master he spent time under had ever been the affectionate type. His parents had been too busy for him. The feeling of a dead man touching him was that much stranger.

"You will always be my son. No matter what you choose…"

Kylo looked at him, his stone face twitched with emotion for the slightest of moments.

"Love will be your redemption, Ben."

Kylo turned to Han, to speak, to ask him how or what he knew, but the dead man was gone.

Just as he always was when needed.

And Kylo was once again alone.

Then you realize you're not of

Flesh and blood

You've become

Human, like the rest of us