Ben!
The darkness of the hours spent in the deprivation chamber had been
overwhelming. Silence upon silence drowning him, Kylo Ren sat in place
on cold stone hearing nothing but the whisper of the voices that that
haunted him; voices which were nothing more than a lingering memory,
anguished, from which there was no escape.
He felt a kind of agony, a wisp of grief burrowing into
his consciousness. And he fought against it unable to suffer the
pain it caused him.
Ben!
With a cry he stood to his feet and paced anxiously. As it often
did his inability to subdue the voices, and that cry of a name
which no longer belonged to him manifested as rage; a self loathing
hatred at himself, at his failure to calm himself and stay in the moment. So conflicted was his very training that he was pulled
between two ideologies; living in the present moment with the living
force, and dwelling in the anger of his past and present self that
they twisted him apart.
That final act he had performed had not righted his path as
he had hoped; it had only burdened him further. And the long days and
weeks spent in the dark chamber had seen his heart and mind split
down the middle, a part of his conditioning which he had expected
was intentional. He was completing his training, and the only path
to do so was through great suffering; not the physical trials imposed
on him by Snoke or the other Knights, but instead a long period of
solitude in utter darkness to "cleanse" the light that remained
within him.
Much like the disappointment Skywalker had expressed with
him and his failures time and time again, Snoke had done the same.
And it shattered what little confidence he had left. Putting his
hands upon his face and clenching his head as emotion ebbed through
him, Kylo Ren felt the scar inflicted upon him, a wound which
refused to heal.
The girl.
He pounded his fist against the stone wall of the chamber,
lashing out, releasing his hatred. And he saw the face of Skywalker.
A face the teemed with shame and regret, the last time he looked upon
his former master before fleeing the Jedi temple, returning only
when he had the strength to reduce it to ashes.
Cutting them down one by one.
His rage fueling every action, every swing of his unstable,
boiling saber as it shredded through his former allies, snuffing out
the flame of the force within them.
It had felt so good.
But still, despite all that, the face of his master, his uncle,
haunted him. It was the specter of a legacy he could never live up too.
A path he could never tread so fantastic and unbelievable was the myth
surrounding Luke Skywalker. And the jealousy that had overcome him as
a result of the constant reminder of the destiny he could never fulfill
consumed him; and so he found another mentor, the voices that called
from the darkness, channeled to him through Snoke.
The power. The strength.
How anyone couldn't feel it. How they couldn't see what strength
flowed from the darkness, Kylo Ren couldn't understand.
How his uncle could blind himself to it so willingly when it was so
very clear so abundantly present and so irrefutably dominating. It was
because of this that Kylo Ren had carried out that last fateful act,
to secure himself in the shroud of the abyss that called to him.
Ben!
Ben Solo fell to his knees and let out an anguished cry
which echoed through the room. To see his blade come through the other
side of the man whom he had once called father. It should have
strengthened his resolve but in that moment, he felt emptiness.
"Han Solo."
He muttered the name aloud, heard it echo back him. And
a foul chill crept over him. The man who was never there, who
had sent him to Skywalker, who sensed the darkness within him
even before he himself had been aware of it; a man afraid of
his potential, his strength, but not afraid of him. A part of him,
the part that Snoke had suspected was still there had wanted to let
go, to allow his father to take his haphazardly constructed blade,
to toss it into the abyss of Starkiller Base. But the darkness had
a will of its own, and it stayed his grip, ignited the blade, and
ended his fathers life. He could still feel the chill of forgiving
fingers brushing against his face. And when he thought of it, the
scar left upon him by the rage of the girl who had defeated him
burned with the imprinted of an aching hatred - a hatred he could
feel as ever present as the darkness itself, one that would have
ended his life had a rift in the earth between them had not
separated their paths.
"Han Solo."
Silence.
in the murk of blinding shadow, a figure appeared before
Kylo Ren. Illuminated in a cold blue light, the cloaked ghost
which haunted his waking dreams stood before him; the man
called Anakin Skywalker.
"Grandfather."
The figure said nothing, simply loomed over Kylo Ren.
And as his face became visible beneath the draping hood of his
cloak, Kylo sensed the conflict, saw the very same confusion in
his grandfather that he felt within himself. With a face half
flesh and half machine, the figure needed not say a thing. With
an unbroken gaze that penetrated Kylo Ren and made him feel like
a small child, Kylo knew exactly what the illusion represented.
"Show me." Kylo whispered. "Show me the darkness."
The figure vanished before him.
"SHOW ME!"
Suddenly a cascade of light. Kylo Ren cried out, covering
his face as light flooded into the room and attacked him. He very
quickly realized that the chamber door had been opened. His
isolation was at an end, but he felt no closer to a cleansing
of the light than he had before entering in the first place.
Saito Ren stood before him, donned in a similar mask
and cloak; another Knight of Ren, disciple to Supreme Leader
Snoke. He towered over Kylo, tall, fierce and stoic. And he
held something in between a gloved fingers which emited a
dull, blue and red glow.
"Our Leader says you are ready." Was all Kylo heard
from behind the synthesizer in his mask, a tinny buzz
somewhat more sinister and snake like than Kylo's own
helmet.
Kylo confided in no one, but he rejected the claim
on the notion that Snoke's assumption about him was wrong;
he had not extinguished the light in him as the training
had been intended. He was no closer to completing his training
in the dark side of the force than he had been before entering.
If anything, it felt to him as though he were weaker, more
tainted by light than before.
"I need more time." Was all he said in reply.
"The supreme leader demands your presence now."
Saito replied in a stern matter. "There is no more time to give. Our master is impatient.
And he says you are ready."
"I feel the pull of the light. He senses this.
You all sense this. I am no closer to purification than
I was before."
Saito circled Kylo, looking him up and down.
"He expected this from you. I'll say little
on the matter except this."
Saito held out his hand; there were two Kaiber
Crystals in his palm. One red, one blue.
"The supreme leader is wise." Saito said with
finality. "If he says you are ready, you are ready."
Kylo looked down at the glowing crystals,
puzzled by the presence of two. And then it began to
make sense.
Ben!
Skywalker, so rigid in his devotion to the light.
His father Anakin, a master in both the light and the
dark side of the force. The Jedi had fallen due to their
lack of vision, their restrictive view of the living force.
And the Sith had done the same.
Snoke was wise beyond his many years, and he had
witnessed the fall of the Jedi, the rise of the Sith, and
the eventual destruction of both.
Ben Solo had killed his father, but he was no less
conflicted now as Kylo Ren, perhaps more. But the truth of
things dawned on him quickly as his eyes surveyed the
glowing crystals, the basis for the new saber he had been
tasked to construct.
There would never be another Sith Lord again. Nor
could another Jedi rise.
True power came from a balance of the Force. And as
both Kylo Ren and Ben Solo peered into the spectrum of light
and dark itself, they both realized, as one living man torn
between two halves, what their destiny was.
There had been an awakening; the dark side, and the
light. And only through the embrace of both could real,
lasting power truly be obtained.
Kylo Ren took the crystals out of Saito's hand, and
made the long march back to the Supreme Leaders temple to
begin his real training.