A/N: As soon as I saw "The Last Jedi" I couldn't rest until I started this fic. These characters are just too compelling! Please forgive any lore errors; I'm not a Star Wars expert by any means. I'm just fascinated by these characters (especially Kylo Ren/Ben Solo) and want to write them.
-oOo-=-oOo-=-oOo-
CLAIR DE LUNE
-_ I _-
It was all fire and ash in Kylo Ren's dreams that night, but that was the sort of thing he always experienced after a particularly large amount of excitement the day before. He supposed that was a terrible understatement, but it didn't matter because he'd only thought it to himself.
However, the very act of considering himself, and only himself, alone, brought an involuntary shudder through him for reasons he preferred not to explore. He was only just waking. It wasn't time yet to let it all crash upon him. Perhaps he would work through it piece by piece.
There were techniques which he'd been taught as a Jedi which he still used, which one must, if one is to remain sane with the force pulling one's mind in a myriad of directions all the time. He'd always been told he was special, gifted, strong, but those who told him that seemed not to understand that the gift and the strength swung in opposite ways, too. The force could be a curse, and sometimes, though he loathed to admit it, it became a weakness.
One of the things he'd learned in his training was how to meditate, and he used it every morning like a tool to anchor himself and the force which pushed and pulled him, bringing it all into a manageable equilibrium. If he didn't have that, if he didn't manage it, if he didn't balance it every day, every morning, without fail, he was convinced he'd have self-destructed long ago.
Still, regardless of intent or discipline, the previous day had been so taxing that he found himself sliding to his knees onto the floor beside his bed; he had not even the strength to stand. No, he did. But he didn't. He couldn't make himself.
He stretched forward over his knees, allowing his head to fall, resting his elbows on the hard, cold floor which shone with perfection and he felt imperfect.
He felt he was running out of time.
Hux would expect him soon or, worse, come to fetch him personally and he had to balance himself before then. He absolutely had to balance himself before then. Especially after yesterday.
A certain pain washed through him in an unconscious reawakening of something he didn't want to think about, and so he ignored it, sat up and began breathing, breathing, and finally giving his full attention to the thing that nagged him, and nagged him, begging for his attention all the time, trying to rule him, scratching at his edges; the force.
What do you want today? He wanted to demand from it. But it never answered right. It always answered in cruel ways, and never directly. Perhaps it was the indirectness that was the cruelest part of it.
However, this moment was always the best of every day, because this was the moment in which he could ignore everything else and merely exist with the force and let it flow through him however it would. It was once everything else started getting in the way that it all got muddled. But right now, things could be clear and simple: just him and the force. Just … not even him, but only the force. It was more than him.
Which way will you pull me today? He asked. It didn't answer. He wondered if something so vast could laugh at him. Probably not. Sometimes it made him feel so small and insignificant. It never answered that particular question, either. He didn't even know why he still asked it. Force of habit, perhaps.
Maybe it didn't answer because he wouldn't like what it had to say.
Fine, he told it. This same impasse was reached every day. It was part of the balancing act for him, knowing and admitting that he couldn't control what the force would try to do to him, but also knowing he might be able to control how he responded to it.
Sometimes he wasn't able to control his responses. That happened more often than he cared to admit or think about.
Again, that thing nagged at him that he didn't want to recognize.
Not yet.
It was harder to stay focused today than usual. Because of yesterday.
He heard his own breathing; he heard it was labored. That thing demanded his attention, but he didn't want, no, he couldn't think about it.
Not yet.
He drew in air and focused, tightening his closed eyes, and he released, and the force was there, and so was an imbalance, as if part of it had fallen into a vacuum. There was an emptiness, a lopsidedness, an unusual negative space he'd never observed. But it didn't seem new. It was like walking into a room he'd walked through a thousand times, only to notice an empty space that had always been there that he'd never noticed before. He couldn't stop staring at it, or, rather, sensing it, wondering what it was and what it meant, if anything.
He felt as if he wanted it to be filled, yet it seemed a ludicrous idea, for he knew not with what it could be filled, or even what it was, and then urgency struck him as he realized time was passing and he'd scarcely begun the process of balance.
Breathe, he told himself, forced himself.
Again, that thing pounded distantly on his mind's door.
"No," he said, before realizing he was speaking aloud, not meaning to, and ignoring the weakness and panic that echoed in his voice. He wasn't pleading. He wasn't.
He needed balance; he had to get balanced. He wouldn't allow the force to weaken him in front of Hux today, but his mind was beginning to curl into itself in the anxiety of running out of time. He didn't trust Hux as far as he could throw him. Actually, he could throw Hux pretty far. He realized needed to come up with a different analogy.
Breathe, he thought, focusing on the act of doing so and paying attention to the flow of the force inside of him. It was restless, unusually so.
Breathe, again.
Again.
He discovered he was wounded, but he didn't want to think about why or how or when, yet it nagged at him when he tried to ignore it.
"No," he said, not wanting to face it right now.
The remembrance of the closing door of that ship. It had to be that ship, didn't it?
He trembled under the weight of trying not to think about something which his mind so badly wanted to think about and released a breath, a shattered exhale.
And her face.
"No!"
His hand formed a fist and pounded into the perfect, perfect floor before he'd realized what was happening.
He was running out of time.
Breathe.
Breathe!
The force within him roiled at the mere suggestion of her.
He had to balance himself. Now.
Using his coiled fist, he pounded into the old wound at his side, creating pain, an ache, sharp then dull, upon which he could focus his thoughts. He gasped at the pain of it, shuddering, and it eclipsed everything else for a moment, just long enough to break up the thoughts which had threatened to ruin him. The pain allowed him to drive himself into a deep, sharp focus.
The force, in the way he'd been taught to use it, was a tool, a blade, sharp and powerful, best used to carve the universe to one's will. He was now ready to do so.
He stood at once.
-_O_-
Scarcely half an hour later, he entered the meeting room with all the focus of a nocked arrow ready to fire.
General Hux and the other First Order officers who had survived the Rebel insanity stood at once at his arrival, but he didn't care. Nor did he trust any of them. He took his place at the head of a long, polished black table.
That thing threatened to nag at him in the back of his mind.
"Report," commanded Kylo, pushing that thing away.
"Yes, Supreme Commander," said Hux, too compliant for Kylo's taste. Too simpering. Hux was clearly looking for weaknesses in Kylo he could exploit. "The Rebels have been reduced to a handful-,"
"I know that," said Kylo, unable to keep an irritated impatience out of his voice.
"And they've escaped at lightspeed so we don't know where they are-,"
"Yes," said Kylo, quickly losing all patience. He didn't want a rehash of the things he didn't want to hear, or continuous reminders of … nothing. "I know."
General Hux seemed to finally notice he was reporting in all the wrong directions.
"However," said Hux, "despite the fact that they were not all destroyed, their numbers are reduced to so few that it would be virtually impossible for them to muster forces that could be of any threat to us."
Kylo just watched him.
"So, the most effective course might be to continue to exercise the dominion of the First Order over the galaxy," said Hux, glancing at Kylo. Hux seemed to be trying to gauge his reaction to his suggestion.
Kylo watched Hux for a moment, just long enough to allow the general to become uncomfortable. Then, Kylo looked over the rest of the officers. They all looked uncomfortable, as if they expected him to force-choke them all at once. It was at times like this that Kylo Ren really did feel like a monster, one behind glass, watched by onlookers who would never understand him, but would point and whisper and wonder what he might do, and fear him.
He knew Hux was wrong about the Rebels, that they were a threat to them, despite their decimated numbers, but he couldn't tell him why. It was impossible for the general to understand the power inherent in… in…
He tightened his hands into fists at his sides, his entire body poised to strike at once and he willed himself not to think about that, not now.
"We must use our forces to control the galaxy, first and foremost," said Kylo, addressing all the officers in the room. "Chasing after one small ship of rebels would be a waste of time and resources. Right now, with both the Republic and the Rebellion in shreds, there is a power vacuum in the galaxy which we will fill."
As he went on to give various contingents specific instructions to subdue and control the disparate corners of the galaxy, he watched the tension, the fear in the officers slowly relax and subside as they listened to his orders. He knew they had been on edge, wondering if this new leader, new Supreme Leader, who had seized power through violence just the day before, would be sane or mad or somewhere in between.
He knew some had heard of his madness on the planet of Crait, how he'd ordered a legion of fire upon one man, one Jedi, beyond all reason, and how Kylo had seemed to lose control.
He had lost control.
It was a problem.
But today, he would not.
He willed himself that he would not.
After the meeting ended and all the orders were placed, only Hux remained with him in the room with the large black, polished table, like a toppled monolith, fallen from worship to the mundane.
"Which way will you go?" asked Hux, and Kylo felt a sharp moment of adrenaline-induced panic that Hux was asking about the light and the dark and knew of his inner recesses and battles and agonies which he would never, ever have willfully revealed. But, of course, it was impossible that he could know about that, Kylo recognized in a moment. What Hux meant was which contingent would Kylo choose to join in the subjugation of the galaxy.
Kylo looked at Hux.
"Would you like to ask that again?" he inquired meaningfully.
Hux's gaze faltered slightly, yet Kylo saw resentment behind it.
"Which way will you go, Supreme Commander?" asked Hux with a certain bow of his head.
He felt that distant… thing, and knew which way he wanted to go. In fact, he was pulled, drawn towards it, like a magnet, like a polar wind, like a subatomic particle, and it threatened to cause him pain if he resisted it. There had been no pain yet, though. At least, not the type of pain he couldn't handle.
Fine, there was pain, but a different type. He didn't want to think about that, not yet.
But he had to.
He touched a pad upon the fallen monolith of a table and a ghost map of the galaxy shivered into being. Approaching it, he looked at the systems, and he knew. He knew where… where she was. He knew that, as long as she was alive, she was a threat to the First Order. She was a threat to his rule. But, in the push and pull of the force, in the radiant glory of their combined ability, it was almost as if his rule and the First Order didn't matter. The Rebel Alliance didn't matter. The Resistance didn't matter. The dead Republic didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the force.
His eyes fell on a small system on the outer reaches of the galaxy, probably where some Rebel sympathizers laid low.
"There," he said, pointing with a black, gloved finger.
"There?" inquired Hux, seeming to be honestly caught off-guard.
Kylo glanced at him.
"… sir," added Hux.
"Yes," said Kylo.
"Why," asked Hux, adding: "Supreme Commander?"
The general was going to have to get used to calling him that, Kylo could tell.
"Because that's where the rebels went," said Kylo.
Hux paused in the clear inability to understand Kylo's motivations.
"Sir," said Hux, after regaining his wits, "there can't be more than a few dozen of them. They can't possibly cause us any trouble, not now, and they may never manage to do so. The First Order would be much better served by your abilities in obtaining the galaxy at large, not chasing after a tiny band of rebels in some backwater system no one has ever heard of."
Kylo could see the logic in Hux's argument, and wondered if his reason had been compromised by what the force wanted. He turned back to the map of the galaxy to consider.
"Aren't you going to ask me how I know where they went?" asked Kylo, clasping his hands behind his back and finding his eyes drawn again and again to that tiny planet cluster where he knew she was.
"Well, no," said Hux. "I simply assumed it was a … force thing."
Kylo glanced at Hux, feeling vaguely amused, but force-induced loneliness crushed his amusement right away. Hux was right, but he couldn't understand. He would never understand.
She did, though.
He crushed that thought with a mental fist.
"You're right, General," said Kylo, acceding. "Right about the force, and right about where my focus should lie. I suppose now is not the time to chase after a ragged band of rebels."
"I could send a group of assassins after them," offered Hux.
"No need," said Kylo, perhaps too quickly.
"Are you sure?" asked Hux, probing.
Kylo turned his gaze to Hux, refusing to respond further on the subject. Hux withdrew from the conflict.
"As you wish, Supreme Commander," said Hux, simpering again. He was terrible at acting.
"I'll work with the main forces," said Kylo.
"Very good, sir," said Hux.
"You're dismissed," said Kylo.
"Oh," said Hux, caught off-guard by his sudden dismissal. "Of course."
The general left with as much dignity as he could muster, which was much more than yesterday. Kylo had taken out a lot of his frustrations on Hux, but he didn't trust him at all.
Kylo felt his eyes drawn again to the cluster of white faded spots in the corner of the galaxy's map. He knew where she was, he could feel her, he could feel her force, and he was drawn to it. He moved closer to the map almost without knowing what he was doing, and his hand, his gloved hand, reached up to touch the spots, the facsimiles of planets, that one, the second from the left, smaller than its twin, but larger than the next one… that was the one. She was there.
And then he saw her.
Breathe.
-_I_-