It was an ugly wound that would promise a scar. The welt had been stitched from his temple, along the smooth surface of his cheek, snaking down his rigid jawline and disappearing beneath the fabric of his cloak. At his side, a droid's metal spindly appendages gouged the tolerance of his pain, humming a series of beeps and whistles as though in disbelief that his poking and prodding on charred flesh earned little reaction from him-other than a slight grimace that did not mar his deadpan expression for very long.

Ben remained silent to the action, wearing the pain like a mask, hiding behind the expressiveness in his eyes that generally betrayed his emotions, even if the thin line that his lips so often held didn't waver.

He had to sit a little taller in order to give the droid better access to the wound, his tall overbearing form uprooted in the privacy of his quarters surrounded by stark white panels and the galaxy stretching on outside a window behind his head. His subconscious delved deep into the very front of his mind, thinking . Planning for that next step. While he had only just returned from dealing with a small band of resistance fighters, what remained abruptly after had been something he had yet to determine.

He gently probed and grasped for his thoughts, finding an endless depth of darkness that traversed down his family lineage like a thread, pulling him into some sort of dark place that he couldn't crawl out of. Lost. Vader had called out to him, and Snoke . All consuming. Ferocious, even.

Kylo Ren was met with the same result. Nothing. Nothing that he replaced with something stronger: a familiarity that had proven equally foreign to him, a tug that beckoned him, to traverse galaxies to find the girl that had left him to die in a snow-clad forest. He'd sought out that pull in the force ever since, vowing with every particle of his being that he would find her friends, the traitors, the murderers and the thieves and he would wipe them out before laying waste to the scavenger herself.

If he could murder his own father, then surely the Resistance would prove an easier feat?

There was a hesitance in some part of him, albeit subtle, but it was there.

They could not have the same amount of skills that he'd been forced to learn in childhood. Beaten for every misstep, berated for every missed strike, the perfection that was expected out of him at all times. Snoke's teachings grew more perilous than the last, each lesson testing his limits and pushing further than that.

Ironically, it was a misstep that had earned his father the point of a saber through the chest.

Ironic indeed.

A quick jab at his face proved to be more of an annoyance than anything, his brow creasing at the same jab in his concentration-just enough to waver his focus. He held steadfast, and continued his search with a wandering mind.

With careful, practiced precision, the droid pushed a needle into his skin as it worked on the stitches, and while it hesitated at his wince, it did not stop in its demonstrations lest he protest its lack of progress.

His fingers scratched against his gloved palm, betraying any sort of notion that he was completely relaxed.

But that familiar tension held itself inside of him tightly, coiling around his tense muscles, restraining him from lashing out and delving into the dark part of him that was so easy to succumb to. That normally calm demeanor that he so easily exhibited to strangers had carried him far in the galaxy's politics, but how long would that last?

As far as he remembered, he'd always been this way. Quiet, holding an internalized rage that was ready to unleash at any given moment. Sometimes it had. He'd send anything and everything in sight shattering into pieces beyond repair in one of his childish tantrums.

Unlike his family, he had put his thoughts, his mannerisms, and his expressions behind a mask-now more literally, closing off any of his internal thoughts completely.

Kylo's bottomless depth of anger and spite was lulled only by a surprising sense of regret. Too much of it even.

As he pressed, the stench of salt water assaulted his senses, a tide drawing a breath and humming deeply, crawling along the sand and stretching itself thin. Then it withdrew, drawing away to breathe. He pressed deeper, feeling for the tether that kept their minds connected, a sharp prod threatening to sever his concentration.

One hand shot up to brush off the droid, breathing in through his nose. He could feel her there, a trembling presence in the force that willed him forward. He obeyed its insistence, its adamance .

When Kylo Ren opened his eyes again, he found Leia Organa, standing in the privacy quarters with an unmistakable somberness in her eyes that bled sorrow, her lips pressed into the shallowest form of a frown.

It burned him to his very core, a spark igniting at the pit of his stomach that urged him to stand. Every word was laced with malice, lips pressed into a tight line, swallowing thickly underneath trembling lips. "You're here to mock me." He guessed, signature curled fists at his sides threatening to lash out at her mirage.

"No." She moved slowly, but with purpose and grace. His vision swam briefly with memories; the shimmering waters from a bedroom balcony, the long sheer of curtains decorated in bright colors and blowing in a gentle breeze. His father's booming laughter echoed in the pilot's seat when the Falcon shot by his window.

Kylo's eyes misted over, blinking them away when two languid steps took her closer to him. He shot up, the scenery around him corroding into a mist. A bridge stretched endlessly on one side, the other coming to an abrupt stop a few feet behind him-only one exit, the exit that his mother stood in the way of with a wall of light behind her and behind him, an endless darkness offering to surrender himself to it if he willed such.

When he looked up to the railing, Rey wasn't there.

"You're hurting. I'm here to help you."

"You're not real," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Get out of my head."

"You're tipping back into the dark side, Ben." Leia's voice was gentle but powerful. The executive presence that came with it was alarmingly calm, a sincerity in her words that made him waver for the briefest moment. "Don't go too far."

She stood just inside the borders of his vision, a darkness approaching with fringed edges behind him. A step took him back, just as hers pressed forward.

"I never left."

"No," she admitted, voice laced with something mournful and apologetic. "You didn't. You lived with the voices in your head for a long time." Leia had known, Han had known, Luke had known, had watched him get swept away into the darkness where they wouldn't follow. Nonetheless she looked straight into his darkness now, unflinching.

Another step forward.

Another step back.

Leia sighed. "You brought yourself out. You don't belong to either side and that's what's so special about you."

"You're just a memory," he declared with firm, disdainful conviction. "I didn't have a choice! I never had a choice!" Trembling in the foundation escalated, no railing on either side to grab onto but the bridge trembled underneath his feet, the foundation holding it together threatening to give way and throw him into the abyss under his feet following his father.

"I let you down. You were manipulated by Snoke and we weren't there for you." Every strain in every vowel pushed through her lips in order to keep her voice low and contained. The efforts were in vain, her voice resonating around this place, echoing off of walls that he couldn't see. Yet she stood there, steadfast with her hand outstretched to him and begging him to come home.

Kylo sneered at the display, his mother prying against his mind and demanding entry. He didn't allow it, glowering underneath pinched brows.

She shuffled forward, her gaze never wavering from her hardened determination. Her hand was hovering just in front of him, a trembling hesitance spreading through each finger. You need to stop fighting it. Come back to Ben where you belong . Please don't throw yourself down this path again-"

" Stop! " He shouted through trembling lips, his shaking hand rising to meet hers. Not with any show of promise, but a threat. He willed the Force to his palm, but it did not come when he called to it. His surroundings offered nothing, his loss of control only apparent by the bridge bowing underneath his feet. " Go !"

Leia's eyes widened at the vitriol in his voice, spilling over much like the darkness that reached for him with long spectral appendages. Her hand fell, her gaped mouth closing into a tight-lipped frown. A frustrated breath puffed from her chest

"Try a little harder-"

"I'm done trying for you."

A scowl etched fierce lines into her face. Blood rushed to her face, her fingers, her ears. "How well would you sleep knowing that everything you sacrificed to bring yourself back would be wasted? You're failing yourself ." She grimaced. Another step.

Kylo couldn't move back anymore, his feet scraping against the edge and threatening to take him. A contorted whisper beckoned him to take that final step, to tumble away into the darkness and become who he was meant to be in the beginning. If he could not find a place as Ben Solo, if Kylo Ren's actions could not be forgiven, then he may as well damn himself to who he could control.

"I don't know how this ends for you, but I want there to be an after. Please. "

"An after," he scoffed, testing the words on his tongue. Ducking his head, he gave it a swift shake, throwing his hands out in defeat, a shrug of his shoulders reminiscent of his father when he was growing particularly frustrated. "That's impossible."

"Ben, look at me." She demanded. When he didn't oblige, she repeated the words much harsher, an order befitting a general reprimanding a rough crowd. "I said look at me."

Slowly, he did.

"Don't spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. You're not alone. You've never been alone. I love you. We all do and all I am asking for you to do is to try. "

"I'm trying." He grumbled through grit teeth. "I know what I have to do, but I can't."

"Let me help you." She whispered. Her hand came up to meet him again, strafing forward, puffing out her chest as though she could stand a chance against the broad-shouldered son who dwarfed her. She could.

Kylo-Ben was burning out, the longer he struggled to validate himself, to seek validation from others.

All of the frustration seeping from his limbs gave way to submission instead. A gloved palm came up once she was within arm's reach, not standing too close to the darkness but close enough that she could still reach him a second time.

Leia became the witness to his corrosion of anger, shifting into uncertainty, then anxiety-a trace of what could have been fear. Still, anger grasped at his muscles tightly, a short breath expelled from his chest. His face surrendered from something neutral and soft.

"Mom…"

A sadness held steady in her eyes. "I know."

Light and dark hung precariously on both sides of the bridge, both pulling insistently. The darkness was approaching, tugging at him to urge him into the void, to take a step back and surrender to who he was meant to be. One step would do that, and the nightmare would be over.

Kylo's-no, Ben's eyes fluttered from a sudden gust of wind, feeling it rake over his skin and his hair. A harsh jerk pulled him back-Ben jerking forward to grasp for her hand, but the edges of his heels slipped from where they teetered precariously over the edge. Fingertips brushed against his own, a panicked gasp screaming out his name as Ben plummeted down into the abyss.

A shuddering gasp escaped him, the darkness that fringed the edges of his vision closing in until it obscured his vision completely.

Kylo Ren didn't imagine Han Solo lifting him in the air as a child and pretending he was the Falcon. He didn't imagine Leia Organa swooping him into her arms and making him laugh until his stomach hurt; until he couldn't breathe. He didn't imagine the rare instances when they were all home together and his parents would sit in his room with him because of the nightmares that warded him from sleep.

Ben didn't imagine it, because he remembered. Remembered how he sensed the fear in others, recalled how his father looked at him when he thought that Ben himself wasn't watching, how his uncle was always so cautious, how his mother was always so quiet. He'd understood that it was because of him, but what he hadn't understood was that the voices luring him from his bed were taking him to a great darkness where they couldn't reach him.

A very vivid memory overshadowed by Kylo Ren's insistence that he had been betrayed, hurt. Could he go back now, he may very well have behaved the same way, had he been looking at the path his younger self was straying down.

Sh, Han! Not while he can hear you!

Leia's voice resounded so clearly, as though she were standing there, just over his shoulder and plummeting too, the memory as vivid as the day he sat in the other room and listened to his parents talk. About him. How he was the monster treading down the inevitable, not knowing that he had been groomed by Snoke, told that he was nothing , but meant for so much more.

That day at the Jedi Temple was the first time Ben acknowledged that his parent's fears were right.

Ben Solo was the monster.

Kylo Ren was the nightmare.