4/5/2
They're walking toward the kitchen, covered head to toe in warm layers to keep the wind at bay when Kylo catches a sense of trepidation from Rey.
"Are…" The wind is too high, it pulls his voice away. Are you nervous?
She shrugs a bit.
Why?
That gets an eye roll. (Or what he can feel is an eye roll, between the scarf, hat, and cloak, he's got no way of actually seeing Rey's eyes.) I've never done this with someone who actually knows how to do it right, watching.
He stops walking, stunned. You think I know how to do this 'right?'
Don't you, Mr. Formally Trained Jedi Master?
He laughs for a moment, and then thinks, Do you hear that? The soft rustling sound? That's Luke's spirit sobbing into the void at the idea that I know how to do this. M'Gll knew how to do this. Kammun knew how to do it. I knew how to crash head first into walls of not doing it right until I got a concussion, and then kept doing it until I beat whatever it was into submission, or Luke decided I didn't actually have to Master it.
That pulls Rey up short. So… How did you actually get the title?
By being so good at the things I was good at that he couldn't afford to not let me teach them. It was a school, and… three Masters are better than one if you're trying to convince some parent to send their kid there, right? He's mentally quiet for a moment. And I think my mom may have pushed him into it, too.
Rey knows Kylo's Force skills in and out. She literally pulled them out of his head. She doesn't know how they were categorized though. So, what do you actually have Mastery of?
He looks annoyed. Fighting, physical training, empathy, telepathy, and calligraphy. M'Gll had, genuinely, seventeen or so levels of mastery, and I had twelve, but only after you broke fighting down to five specialties and physical training down to another four. According to Luke I had the making of a fine Jedi Knight, and that mastery of physical disciplines and different saber modes were very important, but I think he was just putting the best shine he could on the fact that I was worth shit at most of the light stuff.
Stop that.
He looks at her curiously.
Down talking your own skills. You're allowed to be bad at things. And if someone had tried to let you learn how to do things your own way, I bet you'd have had more luck with 'light' skills.
He shrugs at that. He's not sure what else he'd say to it, either, nor does it matter. They're at the kitchen, and it's time for him to see what the Maji actually learn from Mistress Rey.
They get into the kitchen and everyone goes silent. Not for Rey. Her coming in for lessons and lunch duty is just another day for them. Kylo though, he's still something of a surprise. They all know he's here, and they see him around with Rey, and every week or so he does another lesson in lightsaber forms (which generally turns into the lot of them wrestling around and climbing on him… He still hasn't quite mastered, or chosen to master, Finn's get the little boogers to snap to attention and obey skills.) but it's not like he attends lessons.
But, as he pulls off his cowl and cloak, and takes Rey's coat and jacket and scarf, and hangs them up with everyone else's, that appears to be exactly what's going to happen.
"Something special today?" Jacen asks. Kylo does a quick double take as he looks at the kid. Apparently, he cut his hair, and might have located a trimmer because his beard is shaped now. Maybe he's started to take Poe's 'how to be an attractive human' advice. As he steps a bit closer, he can smell the kid has also gotten better about laundry. Whatever reason he's doing it for, Kylo's appreciating it.
Rey shrugs. "Maybe. We'll see how the day unfolds."
Kylo can see the kids are all sitting around the different tables. They've got datapads and are working on something. M6, the teaching droid, nods to Rey. Apparently, they're in the part of the day where they're wrapping up the first slate of lessons, and then Rey's got Maji-stuff and lunch.
She heads over to the first of the counters, and hops up to sit on it, cross-legged, waiting for the kids to finish up. They do, wrapping things up, putting pads away, taking a few minutes to get up, stretch, wander around a bit, refill drinks or snacks, and then the push the tables and chairs out of the way to clear off the floor of the eating area in the kitchen.
Kylo joins in in helping out clearing stuff, and like the rest of them grabs a pillow for sitting on, and finds a place in the back. Jacen sits next to him, and smiles. Slumming it with us today?
Maybe. Perhaps I'm here to show you how it's done.
Jacen grins at him. "Perhaps. Master."
The rest of the teens sort of converge in a loose pattern near Jacen, and thus Kylo. Rey gives them a few more minutes to settle in, and then opens the box she's got with her. Kylo had sort of noticed that she was doing something with the sewing stuff yesterday morning, but not enough to really pay attention. She lays out a collection of pincushions.
"Okay, those who can, fetch them for those who can't. And be careful, they've got pins in them."
He watches pin cushions rise from the counter, and all but one are hovering. That's when he realizes that one is his. So, he pulls it to himself. It's a small ball of fabric stuffed tight with more fabric scraps, and one pin stuck in it.
Everyone else has one, and for a moment he's wondering if they're mending clothing today, which some of them definitely need, but… Nope, it's one pin, no needle, no thread, and not even Master Yoda himself could mend clothing with just one pin.
"Now, yesterday we were talking about survival skills," Rey says.
That sounds good to Kylo. He's got survival skills coming out his eyes. If he didn't, he'd be beyond dead. He's not sure how a pin goes along with that.
"Yesterday we worked on calling out…"
Seems like a good plan. Need help, yell for it. And with this group, even the non-Force sensitive can probably produce enough of a mental yell to get one of the Forcelings to respond.
Jacen's apparently paying attention to him, and thinks to him, Yes, they can. Wanna guess who's on permanent listening duty?
Kylo smirks a bit at that, and Rey just looks at them. He knows that look. Had it aimed at him a lot. Kylo mentally rolls his eyes and thinks to her, You were with Luke for two days, and that's what you learned?
She smiles at that. Behave, or I'll give you another look.
I am chastised.
That gets a snigger, too, but from Jacen.
"Now, how to survive while you're waiting for help to come."
Kylo's expecting some sort of combat training, because that's how he'd survive if he were waiting for help to come. He'd just keep killing people until help got there or he died.
This does not appear to be where Rey is going to take this lesson.
"Sometimes, the wisest course is to go still, go quiet, and pull your brain out of your body."
And that's where Kylo realizes what the pin is for, and that he's a good seventy light years in over his head.
Well, Rey wasn't wrong. He had about ninety-three lifetimes worth of calm, find your center, balance (meaning go light), and patience, and…
Yep. It's really not any easier. Okay, the go light bit is, but probably only because it used to be just a hair away from impossible, and now he can sort of focus on Rey and shape his own Force a bit more like hers. (An idle, and somewhat naughty thought is suggesting that part of why he's having an easier time pulling light right now is that he's likely still glowing from last night's beyond excellent fucking, but he shuts that down, fast before Jacen decides to comment on it.) The rest of it…
For a second, Kylo's almost tempted to look down and double check, make sure that he's not, in fact, in a pair of beige trousers and a slightly darker beige tunic, sitting in the work room with Luke and the rest of the Padawan.
It's been a long time since he's felt this helpless at any sort of Force task.
Which is not helping him focus or balance, but… He's just fucking useless at this.
If asked, he'd call this passive defensive magic. Though, since they've got the non-Force sensitive kids here, apparently this isn't magic. This is just… he sighs… emotional and mental control.
Rey's got all of them with a pincushion, with one of the pins all the way through. The idea is to sit there, with the pin just gently poking you in the finger, and you pull your brain away from your body so you don't notice it.
There were times when this sort of discipline would have come in very handy for Kylo. Probably a lot of them, and hopefully vastly more than any of the kids in the room with him will ever have to deal with.
But… he trained himself in the opposite direction. Trained himself to dive into the pain, to use it for strength and power, to get him back up on his feet and fighting again, and this…
It's just a tiny pinprick and every synapse of his mind is on it like a homing beacon on a target. He wishes he'd asked what the fuck the lesson was before asking to come to this, because if he had, he would have known that pulling his brain away from his body so he doesn't have to experience pain is something he'd just fail miserably at.
Fuck this! He wants to leap up and just leave. He spent years, decades honing his ability to focus intently on pain, to pull himself into it, and pull it through him, and use it, and his desire, need to make it fucking stop, to keep him going. His internal battery, his dark, just screams at the idea of this. Of shutting it, and his connection to it down, and going quiet.
Stop it. His own voice in his own head. Or maybe Luke's. Slow down, focus, feel it, and let it pass through you. He mentally rolls his eyes, but he tries.
All he's feeling is the prick of the pin, and all the other Maji around him just zipping along, succeeding wildly where he's failing.
Focus. More on you, less on them. Rey's voice this time.
They're succeeding. This is just like being back in school again.
You are not the only one having trouble.
He sighs, and doesn't exactly follow Rey's directions. He takes a moment to slip into something he's genuinely good at, getting a read for what's going on with the people around him. She's right. He's not, by a long stretch, the only one failing miserably (Not miserably, you're learning, Rey's voice in his mind.) at this.
He notices that Critt's pacing around as he works on this. That's probably a good idea. This is difficult enough without going perfectly still, and everything works better for him if he can move, so…
Kylo's just about standing up when Ostrae grabs her pincushion and throws it, hard, against the wall, yelling, "It's not fair!" She's up, stomping around. "I can't do this! The Forcelings just focus and they're pulled out and… I can't!" She's so mad she's all but spitting. "It's mean," she's glaring at Rey, vibrating with the need to hit, and hit hard, at everything in the galaxy pissing her off, "to ask non-magic people to do magic! You're all laughing at me, because I can't do it!"
And Kylo's suddenly feeling a lot less frustrated, and understanding why this lesson happened here, and now, and likely why he's here, and possibly where so much of the frustration he was feeling at this was coming from.
He speaks first, and then closes on her, kneeling in front of her. "I can't do it, either." He's somewhat aware of the kids behind him, many of whom are stunned by that. Adults can do everything, right? Kylo Fucking Ren, Master of the Order, the Last Jedi in existence, can do anything, right? Then he lays his hand on her shoulder, and just rests it there, hoping it's calming. Then he slides one of the tables across the room. "It's not a magic thing. I've got gobs of it. It might be a sensitivity thing. You and I are just a bit too tuned in to our bodies and the people around us to pull out easy." He tries to remember who else here is a particularly good empath. "How are you finding this, Marrok?"
Marrok makes a face. "It's hard."
"Xanth"
He shakes his head. "I can get into other people no problem; this is killing me."
Limited empathy… "Jacen?"
"I'm out of myself just fine. Listening to the rest of you bitch and moan about it is a lot harder to cut out."
She doesn't glare at him, but she's not exactly buying it easily. "You can do anything. They can, too!"
He shrugs. "Eventually. Badly. You can, too. It just takes a long time and way more work than it seems like it should, and you still feel like you're failing because everyone else can do it better and easier. And given some of the other things I can do, I probably won't attempt to master this, because we don't have to have mastery of every skill."
"Why not master this?" Cassie asks, curious. (Granted, for her, this is something she sees immediate, and intense value to, and on top of that, she's good at it, too. She just focuses on the feel of the weather around her, and she's out of her body, riding the pressure fronts and air currents.)
"This is…" Kylo takes a moment to figure out what he's feeling about this. "Defensive, and… I don't do defense, not really. Not this kind. My defense is offense. Mostly. I've got one really good defensive spell, for me and anyone else in arm's reach. If I'm covering anyone further away, I use the fact that I'm more… fight… than most people can defend against to my advantage." He rolls his lips together, realizing he's digging himself in deeper than he may want to be, on a topic that's not necessarily where they need to go. "Uh… there's no situation where I'd need this skill… Or… I suppose… If I'm in a situation where I might need this… It's already too late, I'm so close to dead that it won't matter." He can remember saying to Jon, 'Do I look like a person who's ever known where too deep is or how to avoid it?' because he can feel all through himself that he's in it up to his eyeballs and doesn't know how to get out.
Now they're all staring at him curiously. He looks to Rey, wondering what to do now, and she thinks back at him. You're the one who hijacked my lesson, you get to get yourself out of it.
He glares a little at her. Brat. I didn't set Ostrae up to explode.
Nope. But this clearly isn't my lesson anymore, so take it to its conclusion. Teach them, Master Kylo.
Fine. And yes, Jacen, we both know you're listening in. Stuff it. "Okay, we're all going to have specialties. Things that are much easier for me or you or whatever. For me, I'm a fighter. And I'm dark. Breaking things, killing things, fu—fouling things up. I'm really good at that. Galaxy class good at that. My balance spot is a lot further to the dark side than most of yours. And this skill, this is a clear your mind, center yourself, find your quiet spot, retreat into it, and… I don't… not really… have a quiet spot. I mean, everyone's got one, but unless I'm in the middle of a fight, it's really difficult for me to get there.
"So, this isn't how I'd go about surviving something. If this is the kind of skill I'd need… I mean… I can power myself off of pain. Rey and Finn both saw it. I can keep going, and going, and going, as long as I need to fight, and if there's…" He gestures to his face, and pulls the collar of his sweater and shirt over to show off the scar in his shoulder, "some big holes in me at the time, I can just use the pain, or make it hurt worse, to keep myself moving."
"Do you… like pain?" Critt asks, and Kylo knows he can likely, with some training, do a version of this, too.
"No. I really don't. But I can use my desire to not hurt to keep going, to fuel the fight, to kill whatever's making me hurt, but I've got to be hurting to do it. So… I wouldn't pull away from something like this. I'd dive into it, immerse myself in the pain, and if it wasn't enough of a jolt, hurt myself worse, then use it to fight back."
He looks at the pin. "I'd… jam the damn thing through my thumb and likely break it off in there so I could jolt myself again easily, and then use that rage to obliterate whatever was attacking me. Then, after, I'd crash and hope the med droid could take it out."
They're all quite for a moment at then, before Ostrae asks, "And when you can't fight?"
"I can teleport, so I can get myself out. But… can't fight is a nebulous concept for someone who can break bones with his mind. Assuming I'm still conscious, I can fight, so… By the time I'd need a skill like this, I'd also be unconscious so I wouldn't need it."
"If you can break bones with your mind, why use a saber?" Jacen asks.
"I learned the saber first. And… I like it. It's one of the things I can do where focus, and quiet, and stillness will come to me, and it's physically exerting, but mentally restful, if that makes any sense." He thinks a bit more. "That's a defensive skill for me, too." He rubs his lips together. "If I break you with my mind, I'm probably going to kill you. I can disable you with my saber, or just deflect what you're going to throw at me." He thinks more, about the feel of the saber in his hand, and the way his body moves with it. "It's… just… something I'm really good at and like doing." He looks at Rey, and gestures to all of them sitting/pacing around. "Is this sort of thing… easier than fighting?"
She hasn't thought of that before. So, she takes the time to think. "It's different. I can probably slip into this a lot more easily than a fight, but… I'm not sure. All of my real fights have been in the part of my life where I've been tied into you, so…"
Kylo explains, "Rey pulled a lot of my lessons right into her head, which means that she got them through the filter of how they work for me. Anyway, I can't slip into this easily. Actually, right now, I'm not slipping into this, at all. I could probably ride it through Rey, but… I don't need help pulling myself out of her body, because that's normally where I am." He feels himself go white as he realizes what he just said, and immediately glances to the teens; Jacen especially looks like he just heard the best line ever. I swear to the Force, Jacen, if you laugh out loud at that, I'll mentally smack you upside-
Calm, Kylo. Jacen is smirking vividly, though. Critt's the one who's attempting to quietly snigger, while hiding behind Jacen's back. And Magiit's biting her lip so hard it's almost gone white. But at least right now, none of the teens have broken into open laughter at that line.
Rey's just looking at him. He can feel that she's suddenly understanding why Kylo might not have been the Master that Luke had perspective parents sit in on a lesson with.
Kylo sighs. "Some things are easier for some people. This just might not be worth the effort you've got to put into it to get the results you're hoping for. Or it might be. Especially while you guys are kind of little and don't have mastery of fifty ways to make people who try to hurt you not hurt you, this is probably useful. I know if I could have figured out how to do this for emotional pain, it would have been helpful to me." He bites his lip. "Still might be." He looks at Ostrae with soft eyes. "I can use physical pain to keep fighting until long past when I should have collapsed. I don't know how to do that with feeling like I'm not good enough at whatever it is, or that I'm failing at it, or that everyone else is effortlessly better at it." He squeezes her shoulder, "Or that everyone is staring at me, laughing at the fact that I can't do whatever it is." She blinks hard, and swallows. "That's… not motivating for me. That makes me want to hurt myself and other people, makes me sure I can't do whatever it is.
"I've been told, a lot, that the dark will lie to you. I guess the light does, too, but that's probably neither here nor there right now. But… Your dark will tell you you're worse at things than you actually are. It'll tell you you can never get better at it. It'll tell you you're worthless and empty and that no one will ever want or need you because you can't ever do whatever that thing is that everyone else can do. I'm not really good at shutting that up, either, but… We're learning, and learning to shut down that voice is part of this. Part of finding the balance spot."
Ostrae's looking up at him, very surprised and concerned, and he can feel the empathy bridging between them. One darkling to the other. He thinks to her. It's not the magic, and it's not the tasks, and it's not any failing on your part. It's just the dark in your head being twisty and cruel. And, twisty and cruel can make you hard and strong. It can shape you into steel if you let it, and learn to control it. Or it can break you into a thousand shards of razor-glass, and let other people use you as a knife to cut others.
But you've got the power over it. It wants power over you, but you don't have to let it have any power you don't want it to.
"It's so hard."
Kylo, with a gentleness he didn't know he was capable of, outside of extremely intimate moments with Rey, gathers Ostrae close and says, quietly, to the top of her head, "I know." He pets her back while she cries against his chest.
He glances to Rey I think we're going to go back to our place, okay?
Rey nods at him, and he ports back to their living room, holding a small sobbing person to his chest.
When Kylo and Ostrae are out of the kitchen, Rey says, "If you've ever wondered what I mean by, 'The Force has a plan,' that's it. Neither of us had any idea that this was going to happen. No flash of precience, no clue. But it did. And right now, he was where he needed to be to offer that help.
"Okay, now, for the rest of you, how many of you feel like this is just impossible…"
The dark lies to you. Force, Luke had said that to him, over and over and over, and… Well, he's kneeling here in his living room with a crying child in his arms, gently petting her back, apparently… comforting her.
Speaking of light side skills he never thought he'd ever be any good with. All he ever really managed to do in the past was just agitate the other person more, too. Of course, in the past, he'd just pull that pain right into himself, and use it to be more… everything but calm and collected.
He sighs. With the exception of Rey, this is the first time he's attempted to comfort someone without the shadow of Snoke in his mind.
The dark lied, or Snoke lied. Both. He decides it's likely both. Or maybe Snoke piled onto the dark's lies. Or maybe Snoke was the liar in the dark.
"I don't feel like I control it," Ostrae says as she starts to quiet down.
He nods, his chin against her shoulder. "I know that, too. Force, I felt like I was on fire, spinning completely out of control for decades, fighting tooth and nail for every heartbeat where I had some power over it."
Her face is red, eyes bright, as she pulls back to look at him. "What made it better?"
He sighs at that, too. "Time. Finding things I was good at. Surrounding myself with people who didn't need me to be perfect at things I was bad at." He bites his lip. "One of them… I'm good at fighting, and I'm good at angry and hurting and… It's really easy, and satisfying to just… rage, you know?"
She nods. She does know.
"One of them tried to push me too far in that direction, and… Wanted all anger, all rage, all the time. That was bad, too. But, at first, he was the only one who didn't try to constantly make me be calm and centered and light, so at first, that felt really good. Like I could be myself and breathe for once. But… Even I'm not all anger, all the time, so that wasn't me, either."
He wipes one of the tears off her face. "Figuring out who you are, and what you like… It takes time. And… I hate to say it, but some shit, you've just got to learn. I hated math with a blinding passion, but, unlike pulling my brain out of my body, I really did need to learn that. There isn't a work around for that."
"I'm good at math." She smiles a little, enjoying the idea that there's something Kylo, who, in her eyes, can do anything isn't good at that she is. "I'm really good at math. The numbers just dance for me."
He's watching her carefully. He knows that M6 teaches lessons here, but he doesn't know how far he can push a child like Ostrae. But… he can certainly have a chat with the droid. And he absolutely knows a place where a little darkling could join a lot of other little kids who are good at math and be fed an almost constant diet of math, because right now the Order is begging for Navigators, and anyone who looks even remotely like they might be able to do it gets fast-tracked into the Officer track, given as many perks as they can stand, as long as they're willing to be trained in math eight hours a day.
"Do you like making them dance?"
"Yes!"
"Like you like cooking?"
She thinks about that for a long time. Then finally says, "I like cooking better. I can eat what I bake. And I don't always know how the baking will turn out. I always know how the math will."
"Good point. Doesn't matter how good you are at math, you can't eat it when you're done." He thinks about that for a moment. "Do you think you'd like math if you couldn't see the answer just by looking at the problem?"
Her eyes narrow, and it's clear she's thinking he's asking her if she'd like to spend time failing at something she thinks she's good at.
"No, I mean, what if we found someone to help teach you how to see the answers to more complicated problems. What if it was like cooking, where you could set it up, and know the rules, know how it was supposed to work, and then… experiment and see what happens?"
She thinks about that, too. "Will they be mean if I get it wrong?"
It occurs to Kylo he's got no idea if his trainers are 'mean' when it comes to this. He really hopes not, because they are trying to grab and hold everyone who's got even the potential for that sort of work. He shifts the question a bit. "Do you think Rey is mean when she asks you to do something you're not good at? Or offers suggestions to do it better or easier."
That gets narrowed eyes, too, and then a very quiet, "It'd be easier if she were."
Kylo nods at that. "Yeah, I'd feel that a lot, too. Luke… That's the man who taught me a lot of Jedi skills, he was never mean, or cruel. Frustrated sometimes, exasperated, and I think, once, he got sharp with me, but he wasn't actually mean." Until he was. Kylo doesn't feel the need to share that with Ostrae. "But I knew I was useless at so many of the things he was teaching, him being patient and kind almost hurt worse." He offers a sad half smile. "The dark lies. I was being mean to myself, because the voice in my head didn't think I was worth kindness."
She's nodding at that.
"Rey doesn't teach me Maji stuff. I… got a lot of the basics when I was younger. She does teach me to be kind to myself. And sometimes she'll give me a little bonk upside the back of the head and point me in the right direction when I'm not being kind to myself." He gives her a little boop on the back of the head. "It's okay to be bad at stuff."
She snorts a bit at that. Then she looks up at him, eyes a bit narrow, thinking hard. "You like fighting."
He nods. "Yeah."
"It makes you feel calm."
He nods at that, too.
"But you try to make me make cookies."
"Cookies are good."
She nods. "They are. Can we fight?"
Kylo exhales long and low. By the time he was doing any training, he was eighteen, the youngest member of the New Jedi was ten, and though by that point he'd shot up twenty centimeters in one year, and was a good head and shoulders taller than the youngest member of the group, but he wasn't, literally, four times his size.
He's, at least, that much bigger than Ostrae.
He can pull his punches; he has in the past with Jacen and Critt. But… Force, if he slips, wavers, or she just moves in a way he doesn't expect, he'll crush her.
He bites his lip. "Against each other?"
She nods.
Fuck. He's got scars all over his body from fights where he didn't get his physical person in the right place to avoid the hit. He's broken probably every bone in both hands, both wrists from hits that didn't land right. He's just… "No."
She looks like she's going to cry again.
Fuck. He thinks of last night. Of the feel of working with Unthar, of… darkside love. Of deeply, passionate, active, attached love. Love that shapes and changes things. And his hope to be and do that, for other people, even if he's not immediately talented at it. What… here… does that look like?
He's biting his lip. "If you and I try to fight, I could really hurt you."
"You wouldn't hurt me."
"I'd certainly try not to." He gently rests his hand on her shoulder and pushes her back. "Try to move toward me."
She leans all her weight into his hand, and pushes and, grunts and tries and…
Kylo nods at her. "You've got a lot of growing up to do before I'd be comfortable trying to fight you. Get to Critt's size and we can talk about it. But," he checks the chrono, they've got an hour between now and lunch. "I can show you what I do when I'm feeling twisty and darker than I'd like, and there's no reason you can't do it next to me."
Ostrae lights up at that.
He takes her hand. "Okay, we're going to go to my gym. Do you have an undershirt or something on under those sweaters?"
"Yes, why?"
"By the time we're done, we're going to be sweating."
"Oh."
And then they're at the gym.
He keeps it cooler in there than the rest of his rooms, but compared to their place on Lirium, it's warm. He's pulling off his sweater, and nods for Ostrae to get comfortable, too.
There's the one wall where a collection of training droids are standing, passive and waiting. Voice command will turn them on and get them moving, but that's not what today needs. There are weights, and training sabers, even one of the blast droids. (Critt likes using the dark saber against that, and he's okay with allowing that.)
He heads to his punching bag, and nods to Ostrae to follow him.
"Do you know how to make a fist properly?"
She nods. "Finn's shown us."
"Good." He makes a fist and whales on the punching bag. It rocks back on its chains. It's a good solid hit. He feels it all the way through his arm, through his shoulder, and the line of his force through the bag. "Part of it's getting your mind right." He punches very slowly, no real force. "It's a line, through you. Your Force—"
"I don't have any."
"Everything that's alive has Force. You do, too. You've just got to channel it. Take a moment, feel your power, your violence, your anger, and pain."
Ostrae closes her eyes and squares her stance in front of the bag. He sees her wiggle a little, grounding herself down into her feet. "Good. Get nice and steady on your feet, you want a good base for this."
She pauses and takes her boots off, and Kylo follows suit. "You're right, it's easier when your learning if your feet are on the ground. You get a better feel. Okay, face the bag, deep breath, feel it. All your anger, your hate, your frustration. You feel it, all red and jaggy."
She's nodding, fingers flexing.
"Okay, we're not going to hit this time; we're just going to think through it. Right leg back, left hip forward. Your arms are for aiming, for getting the power to land in the right spot. Your physical strength is going to come from your core and legs, your power, your real power is going to come from your anger."
She nods, and gets into position. Kylo circles to her left. He takes her left hand and moves it into the right place. "Left hand here. In front of your chest. You want to be able to use it to sweep a counter hit away or come around fast with a second hit." He circles to her other side. "Make that fist." He nods. "Good fist. Finn taught you right. Did he teach you to punch, too?"
"Yes, not like this."
"Not like this. It's the same body mechanics, but different mindset."
"He didn't talk about focusing anger."
"Because he didn't learn it that way. He'd likely have been good at it if he had. He was very good at anything he studied."
She looks curious. "I didn't think you liked him."
Kylo shrugs. "He doesn't much like me. That doesn't mean he didn't work very hard and practice and study to get very good at a lot of things."
She thinks about that, and is about to say something like, 'You didn't answer the question,' but Kylo redirects. "Okay, step forward with the right foot, and extend with the right arm. Feel the motion through your whole right side, feel the pivot on your left hip. Your hip is the hinge, the balance point. No force this time, and do it slow, you're just feeling the move."
She does it, a few times, just tapping the bag.
"Good." He taps her thigh. "Crouch a bit. Jacen hates that part, but physical strength is not what your upper body is for. Especially not yours. If it's above your waist, it's about getting the hit where it needs to be."
"What about?" She hits the bag a bit harder, and it's all from her arm.
"Yep. Now do it again." He grabs her arm. "Don't actually do it. I don't want you to hurt yourself. If your strength comes from your arms, you'll get a few good shots off, and then get tired, and then get hurt."
He gets into position, and pulls up his own frustrations with the pin. "When I was a Jedi we were taught to let go of our emotions, especially the dark ones, but dark emotions can give you a lot of power." Again, he hits the bag, and again it rocks back on the chain.
He grabs it, stills it, and then says to her, "Push the bag."
She looks curious about that, but tries, and rapidly discovers that the bag weighs one hundred kilos and she cannot push it.
"Exactly. I've got big arms, and a lot of strength in them, and if I was just hitting with brute strength the only thing that would have happened is me breaking my hand and wrist." As soon as it's out of his mouth he goes. "Oh, good point. Tape. We've got to have some in here. Hold on." He tries to remember where Critt leaves the tape. He doesn't have hardening his hits down yet, either, and Kylo doesn't want him breaking his hands. It's in a bin with the pads.
"Okay, hand out."
Ostrae holds her hand out, and Kylo tapes it up. "I don't want to explain to Rey why you've got broken fingers."
"You hit hard enough to break fingers?"
He stretches out his hands in front of her. There are small scars and some lumps and gnarls from where bones didn't quite heal right. "Every bone in both of them has broken at some point or another."
"But you pull from pain."
He nods. "Yeah, if I hit you hard enough to break a hand on you, you're going to die on the next hit if you didn't on that first one."
"Really?" Her eyes are very wide.
He nods. "Really." He nods at the punching bag. "That's the eighth one this year. When I'm angry I can punch it out. Just ball up all that angry and hateful and rage and slam into the bag again and again until it's tamed."
"That's how you let go of your emotions?"
"Yeah. I can't just…" he flitters his fingers in floating away sort of gesture. "I've got to do something with them. This is better than hitting anything else, or making stupid decisions, or… A lot of bad stuff I've done."
"What kind of bad stuff?"
"The kind I don't like talking about, because it's bad."
She nods at that. "They tell me I'm being bad when I hit or bite people."
"Well, you're not being good. I bit, one way or another, a lot of people, too. You like Finn, right?"
"Yeah. He's nice."
"He is nice. He doesn't like me because I bit him."
She looks really surprised at that. "Why would you do that?"
"Do you remember the war?" She couldn't have been much past six when it ended. Five maybe.
"Some."
"We were on opposite sides, for a while. And…" He pulls off his shirt, and shows her the scar Finn left on him. "He bit me. I bit him back. I bite a lot harder than he does. It wasn't good. And… If I'd had better ways to deal with being angry and hateful and rageful and just…" he growls and she nods.
"I feel growly sometimes, too."
"Yeah. If I'd had better ways to deal with that, maybe Finn'd like me."
"Is Finn going to decide I'm bad?"
"Are you going to bite him?"
"No?"
"Good plan. Don't bite Finn. He's a good guy." He looks to the punching bag. "When you need to bite things, come see me. We'll bite the punching bag, together." He nods back to the bag. "Okay, so your arm aims. It makes sure the hit goes where you want it."
There's a red dot on the side of the bag. Too high for Ostrae, because it's there for Critt. Kylo hovers the bag off it's hook and gets it to where Ostrae can hit the spot. "Just tap that spot with your fist. Good form, and go slow, and get your fist where it needs to go, to that spot."
Ostrae does.
"Okay, now every time you do that, I want you to feel the motion of your arm. Feel the pull back, feel the extension of the line. Feel it as a channel for your Force. That line, from your shoulder to your fist, that's how your power is going to flow."
She does the motion a few more times.
"Good," he's nodding. She's actually taking to this really well, probably not a surprise. If this had been on offer to him when he was seven, he'd have leapt at it. "Okay, now, don't move. Just stand there, and punch with your energy. Feel the flow of it."
"Imagine it?"
"Sure. Start there. Can you think of your anger? Think of it as a growly, red ball. You got it?"
She nods, eyes closed.
"Now move it. Right to your shoulder joint. You feel it there?" He squeezes her shoulder. "All tangled and angry and mean, just sitting there looking to hit?"
Maybe he should be bothered by how savage her voice sounds, as she chirps 'Yes,' or the possible long-term implications of training a seven-year-old how to punch like this, but right now, it feels right, so he's going for it.
"Good. Do it with your mind a few times. Just like with your body, but don't move. Open your eyes so you can see where you're going to hit. Feel it, imagine the energy moving down your arm, through your fist, into the bag." He says it out loud, but there's Force in his voice. "Hit the bag."
She doesn't move, and the bag doesn't either, but he can feel the impact, and he hopes she can, too.
"Good. That's a good solid punch. Three more times."
And she does. Then she tosses off her top shirt.
Kylo grins. "I told you we'd be sweating."
"I was expecting more running around."
"Training with your body and brain and Force is tough work. Ready to do it with your hand now?"
Ostrae nods.
"Good girl. Hit the bag."
And she does, dead on perfect hit. It doesn't move. But there is a good solid, smack.
Kylo smiles at her. "That's it. All of your basic fight skills follow that pattern. Good form, practice, find your energy, send it through your body, strike."
"How do I hit something moving?"
"You prove to me that you've got good form and flow, and then I hold a target and move it around, and you keep hitting it. You'll miss, a lot, that's normal. But right now, let's get form and flow down."
"Flow?"
"Getting your anger all nice and balled up and then release it through your hit."
She nods. "Okay. Let's hit."
So, they do.
Poe looks shocked to see Kylo there when he opens the hatch to Micah. "You run away from a coup?"
Kylo rolls his eyes. "Apparently, I have off days."
Poe sniggers at that. "So, you're slumming it with us."
Elias and Jacen are behind Kylo, pulling the sledge into place, keeping the faviers calm. But, for once, it's not Kylo setting them off, it's the near black clouds pushing up against the white and gray ones over the sky above them.
"Gotta move fast, Poe, Cassie says the storm's less than twenty-five out," Jacen replies.
Poe nods. "And let me guess, you're worth three droids when it comes to moving heavy things all at once?"
Kylo smirks. "As long as they can keep the faviers from bolting away, yes."
"Well, have at it. My back won't mind not loading the hay."
Kylo settles in against the side of Micah's hatch. He looks like he's comfortably leaning with his eyes closed. "You two feel what I'm doing?"
The boys nod, but Elias says, "Uh, Kylo, teaching is great, but we're a little focused on something else right now."
"Good point." The faviers outweigh the boys by a lot, and they are not happy about being anywhere near open skies with that storm coming. Poe heads over to grab the reins, too, add his mass to the weight.
Right now, Elias and Jacen are working on keeping them calm.
So, Kylo also gets to work. The reason he's doing it, and not, say, Marrok, who is very good at floating things, is that he's good at moving a bunch of things, all at once, together. This is just a matter of feeling for where the loose bits are, namely the lines of space between the bales of hay, and then filling them rigid and stiff with his Force, and then lifting the whole thing as one mass.
It takes a little longer than moving any one thing that size, but not as long as moving each bale by itself.
They settle onto the sledge, and the boys nod. Poe lets go of the reins, and Elias leans up on his toes, to talk to the lead favier. "Okay, love, let's go home, and get away from this. You can smell the food, right?"
Both of the faviers wicker, pleased, both at food and getting away from open skies. Poe looks around and sees the Falcon isn't on the ground. "Cassie want me airborne?"
Jacen nods, looking back. "Yeah, get the fuck out. If it's not attached to the ground, this one's going to blow it to hell and gone."
"So much for a long visit then."
"I was hoping to talk to him," Kylo says.
Elias waves that off. "We can get 'em settled, and Rey can get us back home, after."
"Thanks," And Kylo follows Poe into his ship.
The cockpit is trim, and though it's designed for a crew of four, Poe and Rey and Rose refitted it to work with just him and BB.
Who is chirping at them. "Yeah, I know, but we're about to get blown away, so up we go again." He doesn't look to Kylo as he gets Micah ready for take off. "Sit your butt wherever, and buckle up. I didn't like the look of those clouds when I was landing, but I was hoping to be under them when they got too close."
"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that," Kylo feels the pressure of Micah's jump to flight speed, followed by the heartbeat of free fall while it shifts from grav to anti-grav, and then another loopy second as Poe gets it into geo-sync-orbit.
"All, right we're set." He's looking down at the storm. "That one's a fucker."
Kylo looks down at the boiling clouds moving across the face of Lirium. "Yeah…" They're both quiet, both remembering stories of Hoth.
Kylo rubs his hand over his face. "How are we set for bugging out fast if we've got to?"
"Honestly, worst comes to worst? Five minutes. I can be out that fast. That little teleport trick you and Rey have'll mitigate a lot of damage, but if we're out in five minutes, it means we've left everything but the kids."
"Yeah…" He's quiet for a moment. "I can take the kids, and the rabbits, and the fowl…" He looks sheepish. "I don't have a space for faviers." That's not literally true. "I don't have space that won't drive them insane. They…"
"Don't like being in ships. I know. I brought them here, it was only a seven hour run, and if you ever wanted to see a mess, what eight faviers will do to a ship is terrifying. They're not people. You can't explain to them they've got to live on a ship for a few weeks until you get a new place for them. You'd break them if you tried."
"Shit, yeah."
Poe rolls his eyes. "Kylo, they're pets. If we've got to bug out that fast, you will not have a hard time explaining to the kids that it was either they got on the ships leaving or the faviers did. We honestly do not have room between the Falcon and Micah to take everyone and all the critters in one run. And… if only one ship is on planet and we've got to bug out fast, just getting everyone on will be a struggle."
Kylo sighs, watching the storm. "Well, that's half of what I wanted to talk to you about. You been to Achc-To, yet?"
"Nah. Someone's still getting me a weather sat."
Kylo blinks. He knows he'd asked for one, and generally when he asks for things they show up before he's finished the request. "I'll check. You should have had it already."
"Then it's probably sitting in a storage shed somewhere because the Order doesn't exactly know how to interface with me, yet."
Kylo thinks about that. "Right, you've got no official capacity with us as of this point. Likely aren't really in the system. I know C8 can fix that."
Poe stands up, and heads out of the cockpit, and Kylo follows him. "I've been thinking about that."
Poe can feel Kylo's curious gaze.
"Remember, there was this thing I was supposed to be doing for the Order of the Maji…"
Kylo blinks. "Right. Shit… I'm…"
Poe waves it off. "Completely swamped. I get that. I see what Jon's up to, and his billion details, and supposedly you've got all of his stuff and all of yours on top of it, and…" Poe's voice trails off as he's pulling out his coffee maker. "You're off? Jon doesn't get off days."
"Kinear literally told me to my face that everything in the whole bloody Order works better if I rest on a regular basis, and that's actually close enough to comments some other people…" and his look makes it clear that Poe's one of them, "have given me about how not to be a raging asshole all the time, so… I am taking time off." He says with a smile that only gets to his lips. "If I thought it'd do Jon more good than harm, I'd order him off, too."
Poe thinks about that. There are a lot of things he'd like to do with Jon on 'off time' and there is also a very real set of thoughts about what Jon might do with off-time, and right now, getting sad, and drunk, and likely doing stupid stuff, is on the top of the list.
He inclines his head at that. "You've got… maybe not your idea of fun, but fun stuff coming up, right? Rey's mentioned that."
"The idea is that we'll go to places and do 'recreational' type stuff and be a walking advertisement for The Order."
Poe nods at that. "Okay, you're probably right about him going a bit stir-crazy with full-on off time, but take him with you on some of the fun stuff. It'll be a bridge between not knowing what to do with himself, and no downtime at all. After all, there's nothing he's working on that Threepio can't keep watch on, and unlike Jon, Threepio legitimately does not have to sleep."
Kylo thinks about that for a moment. "That's… likely a good plan. Uh…" He rolls his lips. "Am I over stepping my bounds, or your comfort level, if I invite you along, too?"
Poe smiles. "The idea never threatened to occur to me." He's obviously lying.
"Uh huh."
"And, if memory serves, you want me to go to places that don't love the idea of Order recruiting stations, sniff around, and find a way to work on sneaking people out. Jon and I have talked about that, too. Finding places like Jakku, and getting people out."
The idea of that is a burst of white hot need in Kylo's chest. "Yes. But… that's not the kind of place we'll go to fun stuff for."
"No, I wouldn't think it would be. Not… officially. But… Film festivals, food festivals, cultural stuff, that'll all be on the pretty and shiny part of the planet. The rich bits. Like… Coruscant had them year-round. Something like that was always going on. At the top. At the part of the planet that could still see the sky. Go to the under-dark, and there were entire generations who'd never had a full belly."
Kylo blinks, and nods, and understands. "Master Poe of the Maji. Lady Ren's good friend. Adjacent to, but not exactly part of the Order. He's bright, and shiny, and goes to fancy places, and asks good questions, and talks to people, and he finds out where the dark places are. Where the pretty people don't go. Where… the under-dark lives."
Poe's nodding. "Or, maybe he gets the names and places where the kind of people who go to fancy parties make their money. Where Lord and Ladies lord and lady, and we get the idea of places to go and… explore further. And then, when he gets back to the Order, he has a chat with a few people, probably not more than five or ten of them, and they make a plan, and start. It might be officially branded under the Maji. Ummm… I don't know, outreach or something. Print up some pamphlets, find a place, any place that's cheap and dingy, rent it for a year, and… spread the good word. And if… acolytes get trained off world…"
"Your… outreach members… bring them here, where they can… seek training."
"Something like that. Is it a deal breaker if they just use us as transport, and don't actually join the Order?"
Kylo shakes his head, a bit. "Honestly, no. A lot of people flat out do that with The Order. They sign up just long enough to get off their homeworld, and immediately bugger off as soon as they're somewhere better. We're starting to try and curb that, some. ID'em and if they've scarpered more than twice, we don't take them back, but… It wouldn't be the first time we were just a taxi service to a better life."
"But you'd make it worth their while to join up?"
"No more than I do for anyone else, but the idea is that it's supposed to be worth joining."
Poe nods at that. He hands a cup of coffee over to Kylo. "So, I guess the first bit is…" he can't believe he's saying this, "getting me set up as some sort of official… something…"
Kylo nods. "Master Dameron of the Maji…" He thinks about that. "I had command privileges, but not rank, in the First Order. I think I was about the equivalent of a… Shit, I don't know. I never had more than a few squads under me, but I could take them and do whatever I wanted with no oversight. The only one I reported to was Snoke."
"And let me guess, if you attempted something along the lines of doing anything with more than a few squads worth of men, he'd have fallen on you like a ton of bricks."
"That's my guess. But no one man would have said no to a direct order from me, including Grand Marshalls."
"Interesting. So, complete power, as long as you didn't abuse it."
"Basically. So… You going to make me regret something like that?"
"I absolutely won't promise you that. I will promise, I won't burn you intentionally, unless it's for a really good reason."
Kylo thinks about that, and sips his coffee. "Probably good enough. So, what… do you… want?"
"I need some level of Order ID. I absolutely need access to all of the floors of the ship. I need a landing spot, and I need a place. I'm going to need people. You've got to have spies and people who work in the dark, and I'm going to need some of them. Or better yet, I'm going to need my pick of the guys your testing says would be good at that, but haven't been trained, yet. I don't want to have to beat obedience into them, or break them of your bad habits. And if I'm building teams for this, I want to build them from the floor up."
"Jon told you about his diplomacy floors?"
"Of course."
"A chapel of the Maji? Something big enough so if you and Rey ever figure out what it is the Maji actually really does, you're set, and something you can run Maji outreach through, otherwise. Attach an apartment or two along with it so there's a place for people to crash, and…"
Poe's smiling at him, sipping his coffee. "An apartment or two, maybe a small dormitory. Somewhere for acolytes to stay, before they move onto wherever they go next. You seem to have at least some of a touch for this."
"Maybe it's in my blood." He sighs. "Been a long time since we've found a Force-sensitive one."
"Yeah, I know. At first, I was tripping over them, and now everyone I check out is on a long con." He eyes Kylo.
"Yeah, I don't know if demand is currently keeping up with supply, or what's going on with that. But, if we get it built, we'll have room for them."
"And what happens to Achc-To?"
Kylo sighs, and sits across from Poe. "I… like… and probably need a place for all of this that isn't on the Supremacy." He doesn't like delving into these feelings too deeply, but… "Right now… You ever feel like you're okay, but you're holding your breath waiting for something to go sideways?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, right now, we're okay, but… I don't know what, and it might just be how history rolls, but sooner or later something's going to take a swing at us again. That's just… going to happen, and… I don't want them on the Supremacy if that's going to happen. I know I can't get Rey to stay off because of something like that, but… maybe I can keep them off. And I don't want every other person cozying up to them trying to curry favor, and I don't want them to feel like bugs under a scope because they're close to Rey and I, and…" He runs his hand through his hair. "And at the same time. I can get them better training on ship. I can get them more kids to be around. I can…"
"Give them the normal life you didn't get?"
"Yeah." Another rake of his hand through his hair. "I can, as Jon puts it, make sure they're better prepared to be people in the galaxy, than the wolves that raised me did."
Poe sighs at that.
"You know I'd never bought anything until I was thirty?"
Poe blinks.
"Yeah. Stupid piddly shit like that. Or figuring out, two bloody nights ago, that toothbrushes have to be replaced. They don't… last forever… apparently. Just… stupid fucking stuff like that."
Poe nods at him, and sighs. "And let me guess, part of hating not wanting them near the ship, is not just because it mirrors your own life, but because you're making the decision your mom did?"
Kylo sighs so hard he feels it in his toes. "With a cherry on top."
Poe smirks. "Well, there's something; you know that phrase."
"Yeah, well… You knew her. She liked her sweets, and… when I was little, when she was back, sometimes we'd split a sundae, and she'd let me have the cherry."
Poe smiles at that. "She thought we'd be good at this, you know?"
Kylo snerks. "You, maybe. I don't know that she ever thought that I'd be good at anything."
Poe gently whaps him upside the back of his head. "Stop that. That's Snoke talking. I know for a fact she had some of your poems in that ring of hers. She liked them."
Kylo sighs at that, too. "Yeah. Great. This isn't me showing off my calligraphy skills by writing atrocious blank verse. This is—"
"She thought we'd be good at it. You and me and Rey. Together. She…" Poe swallows. "She came to me on the day of the Second Year party to tell me to get my ass in gear and start helping the two of you do this."
Kylo's turn to blink. "The… Second Year… party."
"Yeah. Ghost territory, right? The thing that guys like me aren't supposed to be able to do?" He'd meant it as a statement, but it ended up a question.
"Yeah." Then Kylo shrugs. "Hux shows up for me. You want to talk about someone who shouldn't be able to to things like that."
"Hux?" Poe looks horrified. "Why?"
"I think… Fuck… Uh… Okay," Kylo passes his hand over his face. "Maybe this is part of you seeing my mom. I'm… never entirely sure if he's actually a ghost or not. Like… You know, Luke, I know he's a ghost. Or Anakin. It's… really… distinctive. Hux might be more… the part of my brain that has an idea of where trouble may lay, telling me what that trouble is. But, sometimes he says stuff my subconscious shouldn't know, so…"
"And you think… me seeing your mom might be like that?"
"Maybe not trouble, but… Hux is probably my idea of 'bad things' personified,"
"Hux?"
"He designed Starkiller and fired it. Personally killed more… people… sentients… anything, than anyone else. Who better?"
Poe thinks about that. He nods.
"You would have thought it'd have been Snoke, right?"
He shrugs. "Not my job to police your subconscious."
"Yeah, well… my subconscious is likely aware that Snoke showing up again isn't the sort of warning I can heed. Hux… I can at least listen to."
"Good advice?"
Kylo shrugs. "Maybe more along the lines of, if he thinks it's a good idea. I need to re-think it, HARD. Maybe… the opposite of that is true for you and my mom. Maybe she's your idea of… good advice? I mean, I wouldn't put it past her to show up. She showed up that day to talk to Rey and I, too, so… But… Was she giving you good advice?"
Poe shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe. I'm… trying some of it. It hasn't bit me in the ass, yet. Anyway, real or not, my… ideal of her… thought that we could do this." He smiles brilliantly at Kylo. "You'd need some help, of course. Someone older, and wise, to help guide the theme of things, but…"
Kylo snorts at that, too. "Five years. You are not that much older, and we aren't twelve and seventeen now."
Poe smirks at that. "No, we're not. But… Look, I'm obviously, not going home today, so… Let's head back to the Supremacy. You go have a little chat with C8, get me set up and a place to land, and maybe a weather satellite in my hull, and we can move on getting the rest of this into motion."
Kylo nods at that, and they're both quiet for a bit, before Poe says, "Didn't you say you wanted to talk to me about two things?"
Kylo thinks back. "Not those exact words, but…"
Poe watches him for a moment, "Well…"
"How do you waltz?"
Poe laughs, and says, "Go find some music, and I'll get the coordinates set for the Supremacy."