A/N: Trying to work through writer's block by delving further into Kylo Ren's motivations. It's not beta'd and not exactly polished, but I thought I'd share it anyway.
I started with a prompt I found on Pinterest "No one cared who I was until I put on the mask."
I own nothing. The title comes from the lyrics to This Is War by Avenged Sevenfold. Disney and Lucas Film own all characters mentioned.
No one cared who he was until he put on the mask.
As a child he'd felt alone, set apart from everyone by circumstance. He'd been carted from place to place by nannies and servants and droids while his family had better things to attend to. More important things. Things that weren't their only son or heir of the most famous family in the galaxy.
His father had been something revered. Han Solo was famous for breaking rules and taking down the Empire that everyone swore caused the oppression throughout the galaxy. He owned a starship that was instantly recognizable by name. His first-mate was also galaxy-renowned. You couldn't be Han Solo's son without feeling the weight that role carried with it. Without knowing that you weren't enough of an adventure for him to pay attention to.
When his father was home, which was less often than he remembered, he brought him strange treasures from faraway places and stories of mischief. Stories that he was now sure contained the most extravagant embellishments imaginable. He was never invited to witness these events firsthand or learn at his father's feet. He was never allowed to follow his father across the galaxy, never thought of as someone who might participate in the legend of Han Solo. He was never given the chance to make his father proud of him.
His mother was even more famous than his legendary father. Leia Organa was an institution in herself. The only surviving princess of Alderaan. Someone with a royal title and all the pretentious trappings that go with it. She'd been someone the galaxy depended on to lead them. To show them how to rebuild after the war she'd dedicated her life to. She was bred to hold an office and that office was not motherhood.
She'd been a mother to him when he'd been young and soft and defenseless, someone who held him when he cried. At least she was until she decided he was too old to cry anymore. She expected him to grow up quickly and carry himself with the dignity and independence that she'd always expected of herself. The way he failed her always held him down when he tried to rise again and reach the height she'd planned for him. He was expected to display the grace of an Alderaanian prince when he'd never walked the planet's surface. He'd needed his mother to show him that her expectations didn't outweigh her love for him, yet she was never there to see him try.
The burden of expectation continued as the only nephew of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. His uncle had been kind to him when he was a child. He'd doted on him and encouraged his promise when he started to feel the Force flow through his veins. He'd taught him to look at the Force as something wondrous and wonderful. And as someone who didn't have to take responsibility for him, his uncle had been the one person who seemed to understand all the power building up inside of him. Someone who kept the secret of Anakin Skywalker and just what that power could do.
Once Uncle Luke became Master Skywalker, their relationship changed to one of obligation. The coldness and distance his uncle treated him with cut deeply to the little boy inside him who longed for their former kinship. The more powerful that he became, the more his uncle pushed him away. The more his uncle treated him with trepidation and fear. Fear that led to a nightmare of a lightsaber hovering above his head while he slept. A lightsaber held in the hand of the uncle he'd once admired.
He fled the family he knew and their expectations that night. He'd run as far as he could. Tried to escape all who knew him and what they planned for his life to be. Those who didn't care who he was, only who they wanted to mold him into. Those who saw him as a burden. Those who saw him as an heir. Those who saw him as something to be feared. Those who wouldn't miss him.
Then the voice had called to him again. It fed off of his failures and his horror. It offered him a place where he might matter. It whispered of his grandfather and a legacy he could rebuild as his own. It gave him a purpose that wouldn't limit his potential. It told him that he would finally matter.
So he put on the mask and became who he believed he was meant to be. Someone that no one could disregard. Someone who commanded respect. Someone to be feared.
The years he wore the mask were supposed to be the best of his life. A time when he could be who he was meant to be without reservation. When he had found his place in the galaxy and no longer stuck out as someone who belonged nowhere.
Yet, the longer he wore the mask, the more he suffered. The more he had to remind himself that this was what he wanted. That being undeniable and exalted and feared was his destiny. That he'd become someone important to everyone, the nightmare they all feared.
At least, that's what the voice told him.
Supreme Leader Snoke was a cruel master. He punished him and berated him and pushed him to the limits of his mental and physical strengths as a way to push him towards his destiny. Fed his hatred of the family that forced him to make the choices that led him here. Told him he'd done what was best by cutting his ties, living up to the potential they would have quashed.
He treated him as if he only mattered as Darth Vader's legacy. He made him aspire to emulate his grandfather. He had no other desire and, therefore, it was harder to fall short in Snoke's eyes. As long as Darth Vader's mission was completed he couldn't fail to live up to Snoke's expectations.
The mask became a symbol of terror to the galaxy, as his grandfather's had, and it painted a target on his back. But at least people cared enough about the power he wielded to respect him.
The day he met the girl in the forest things changed. She was nobody; she wasn't a part of the narrative the way his family had been his entire life. The history that he represented didn't matter to her. She was an outsider who knew nothing other than what she could see. Her thoughts colored him in unblemished hatred for no other reason than his chosen persona.
She wanted to kill him without knowing who he actually was. The mask was her only target.
She detested him because of what the mask stood for. She hated him because that mask had oppressed and maimed and tortured. She didn't care who was wearing it or why they wore it or what happened in their life to lead them to hide their face. She didn't care why the mask existed or what it represented to him. To her he was a creature to be despised, not a villain to be revered.
She didn't care who he was until he took the mask off.
He saw it in her eyes then, the wonder floating on top of the fear. The shock in her expression. Her compassion for him where she'd once held hatred. She wanted to know why.
It took a little time, but that look in her eyes became the mask's undoing. The meticulous walls he'd built around himself, the life he'd convinced himself should be his started to tilt and crumble. Everything he tried to do to maintain his carefully constructed world made the situation worse. Things he couldn't take back.
All because a nobody from nowhere stopped to wonder. Because she saw the pain inside. Her eyes asked the question he'd been longing to answer.
She was the first to ask him why.