A/N. I'm not even sure where this came from guys, I just suddenly started channelling Determined Angsty Kylo Ren. So this isn't exactly a tragedy OR an HEA fic, but I will just say that I see Kylo as an unreliable narrator, his thoughts don't necessarily reflect the reality. Enjoy.
His gloved hands grip the controls as his ship tears across the sands like a poison dart flung in vengeance.
Tattooine's rocky, dry desolation spreads before him, but his eyes focus on her. She is a dot on the horizon and she is a volcano just behind his sternum.
She loves him. He knows that; she couldn't hide it from her eyes in the burning throne room, or in any of the raging, anguished bond-connection moments that followed. But he isn't naive. A few tender moments across the galaxy, eked out from the midst of pain - that doesn't erase everything he's done. It doesn't mean she would come to his bed lovingly every night of their lives, or stand by his side every day. He doesn't want anything so simple. He expects nothing but this:
She thinks he is there to fight her. He knows she can feel his murderous intent, but even with their bond, even with her powers, she can't sift through his every dark shadow. She doesn't know that when she tries to turn him, he is going to nod.
He'll take her hand, if she offers it.
He'll work with her foolish friends, if he has to.
To do what he now realises he must. In order to defeat the annihilative forces somehow amassed against both the Order and the Resistance, he will go headfirst towards the inferno without a second thought, so that she can go on.
It will kill him.
He knows this.
He can't find it in himself to care. He no longer cares whether it was Vader that came to him at last, or Anakin, speaking words that were cruel and kind at once. Or Palpatine or Snoke in disguise, or his mind playing tricks. (Because of course he hears Snoke still. He always has, and he always will. Snoke is dead; long live Snoke.)
He no longer cares who wins the war, who wins the peace, who controls the fucking galaxy. Whoever wins, he will die. But she will go on, clinging to life and survival the way he has clung to death and destruction: with teeth bared and weapon ready. Perhaps she will even be happy.
Not that he's sure what happiness is. He thought he might have found it once, when they found one moment in between arguments for their bodies to move together, when she gasped against his mouth and shattered under his fervent touch - but maybe that was just his ego singing. He thought he might have found happiness once, when she pulled him inside her willing heat and widened her eyes at him in a way he didn't understand - but maybe that was just the primal satisfaction of having his urgency answered, of possessing what he wanted.
He had only ever known aloneness. From the beginning it had been as natural to him as his heartbeat, as the wet of Chandrilan rain, as Leia's hand on his head, as the look in Han Solo's eyes when his child broke distant objects without quite meaning to. He could never have imagined someone just as powerful in the Force as he, until she came into existence right before his uncomprehending eyes, and then she shook through him like an earthquake.
None of it matters now. She starts to sprint. They don't have a moment to spare and yet he eases up a fraction on the controls, puffs a light breath as he tries to keep something inside him in check. She races madly, he can feel her every breath, she has taken her every thought and prayer and frayed nerve and spun it into something fierce that he needs to be swallowed by.
She leaps, and the earthquake shudders through him once more.
A/N. Please leave a comment! I didn't get this beta'd, so I would really welcome any feedback, even if it's one word or an emoji. :)
NB. Title from 'Velvet' by Stormzy, which got me in the mood to write this.
