Chapter summary:
Where Kylo tries to engage a young child and it turns out that they only thing they have in common is the same level of maturity.
Kylo woke up in a single, brutal increment.
His dream had been approaching 'pleasant'. It had ended on a high note. Kylo should have known better than to hope this continues into real life.
Instead, there was no gradual return to consciousness. No lazy lounging in his – in Rey's- bed as he came back into the living world. Instead, it had happened all at once. One moment he was watching with an odd sort of pride as Desmond poked and prodded at the toy he had given him to hone his powers on, and the next Kylo was staring at the cold white tiles of the ceiling of what had once been Rey's cell.
Because he is every bit a creature of habit as much as he is a masochist, he reaches out for her. She isn't there and she isn't having anything from him anymore. She used to ping back at him, returning his sonar pulse through their bond.
Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I still want nothing to do with you.
It had been their daily ritual. Now Rey is an absence. A void where once her side of their bond had once been a glowing beacon of light. This sorcery can't be completely her own creation.
Does she reach out for him, too? Sometimes her presence feels stronger than before, but then it fades quickly. Gossamer strands disappearing as soon as they touch the surface of his ailing mind.
And what of the child? Why is his mind continuing to torture him like this? Torment him with a phantom figment?
The very thought of Rey, in some variation of the universe, having had a child without him… That odd mix of past tense and future tenses that follow along to the notion. It's impossible to wrap one's mind around.
Does she secretly want one? Is that why he's having these visions? Does she secretly, somewhere deep down in her subconscious that maybe even she doesn't realize, want to have a child? Someone to care for and teach and nurture?
Perhaps. Perhaps that longing is leaking through their bond, making Kylo crave these strange things as well.
Kylo had never wanted a child of his own. Had rarely even considered the notion of parenthood. Until he met Desmond.
He wants to… he wants Desmond to be real. If he was real, everything would fall into place.
In his mind, the boy looks like his mother, but he also looks like him. It's an impossibility, an arrogant construction of his mind. Of course, there were certain parallels between Dameron and Kylo as well. These went far beyond their mutual dark hair, one of the more obvious physical traits of Desmond that Kylo can't help but compare to his own childhood appearance.
The pilot was also a rogue and reckless and brash. Exactly like Han had been. They had both somehow stolen the affections of a woman so high above their lowly status that it was virtually unfathomable. And they had both managed to keep her by breeding her…
What had her pregnancy been like? Not his mother's, but Rey's?
What -would- have it been like, if it were to have actually happened?
The Resistance medical facilities were surely sub-par at best. If she were to have had any complications… would the pilot have been there for her? How well would they have known each other before she opened her legs for him? Would the reasons she would have done it just be to spite Kylo? She'd once said that she would have been 'well within her rights' to.
That thought is enough to finally snap Kylo out of his self-defeating reverie. That thought leads nowhere. That way lies madness.
Madness which now seems to inevitable, but that doesn't mean he's not going to fight his descent every step of the way.
Night comes far too slowly, but when it finally arrives Kylo barely makes it to his bed before being pulled under into his vision.
The boy is gone.
Kylo came to his cell fully expecting their usual one-sided struggle of attempts at dialogue. Instead Desmond is absent. Vanished so completely that not even the feeling of his soul can be sensed.
Worse than that, his room has been torn apart. All the furniture not bolted to the walls or floor has been tossed aside or flipped over. Bedsheets thrown about, food and clothes scattered, the shelf on the wall Kylo had nudged yesterday looks like it's hanging on by little more than a nail and a prayer. And a worse than useless BB unit curled into a ball in the corner, no doubt having gone into its hibernation and shelter cycle to avoid having to confront whatever had happened in here.
And no child.
No small pulse of light from him. No vibrations of a sentient presence.
It's not possible. They had only just begun their time together. It's too soon for him to go.
The thought of having lost him already makes Kylo's breath freeze in his chest. He has to be here. He has to be! This can't be how it ends. The boy can't simply disappear from both worlds. Kylo hasn't yet learned what the Force was trying to tell him. There has to be-
Oh kriff. There he is.
The child is right there in front of him, but trying desperately to hide. He'd used a trick. One that lightside children have surely used for generations to hide from other children during play or from their parents when they've been bad.
It works as a simple obfuscation, very much like casting a mental haze over that one little spot that he's occupying. Now that Kylo knows what to look for, all he can see is how the child is cowering against the far wall of his room at the greatest distance he could possibly gain from his captor in the small space.
"Desmond."
Sharp irritation and pure relief roll through Kylo in hot and cold waves, but only one of those emotions is enhanced by his vocoder.. He automatically balls his gloved hands up into fists as he stomps over to the child before he catches himself and forcibly adopts a less intimidating stance.
When Desmond realizes that the jig is up, that his kriffing mind trick, didn't work, he whimpers and crouches. Curling up like that ball of future scrap metal who has just slid out of sight under the bed frame.
"What in all the hells happened in here?" Kylo barks, "what happened to your room?"
And why were you trying to hide from me? Why did you think you could get away with it and why did it almost work just long enough for me to get scared out of my mind?
The boy trembles slightly, shaking his head before he buries his face in his knees and wraps his arms around tightly himself as he cowers. Kylo's voice sounds absolutely terrifying when it's growled through his mask. Usually, from every moment up until now, that had been exactly the point.
And then Kylo sees the imprint of blood on the boy's pants. The dark patterned fabric had hidden it at first, but when he crouches he can see it. Little red circles staining the fabric, created by the boy's fingerprints as he hugs his knees to his chest.
"Desmond..." Kylo's tone drops and he reaches out.
If someone, if one of the troopers, had done this-
"Leave me alone!" the boy shrieks, kicking out at him twice before immediately curling up small again.
Kylo reels back, worried that his injuries might be much more severe than he'd first thought. He could find out through his mind, but with the boy panicking this it would be a painful invasion. He has to find a way to calm him down first, and then he can start to sift through the layers for the truth.
"Who did this to you?" Kylo asks.
The boy starts to cry, then. High pitched and hiccuping sobs, and the waves of his mental state grow sharper instead of smoother.
Well that didn't work. Children are impossible. And he reaches out again only for the boy to lash out once more, a little socked foot colliding with the palm of Kylo's open hand.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
Desmond shrieks it even louder, and not for the first time Kylo is grateful that prison cells have soundproof walls or anyone overhearing would think he's murdering this child.
Then Kylo mentally kicks himself for still having his mask on because the boy really, really seems to hate when he wears that. No doubt it fills in the blanks for every stereotypical storybook villain anyone ever read to him.
He yanks it off in one smooth movement and turns from the tantrumming child long enough to throw it to the side and out of sight. That's when he sees that the vent above the child's bed is open. The metal lattice covering over it is bent, nearly crumpled.
Anger sparks through him, brilliant and sharp. The child, the impossible and empathic child cringing before him, feels the change in his captor and balls over, kicking blindly out at him and screaming in a full fledged tantrum of terror.
It takes every bit of Kylo's tenuous grasp of self control to stop himself from lashing out and punching a dent into the wall above his head until his own knuckles are bloody.
Instead, he closes his eyes and counts to ten. That old, stereotypical move that harassed parents say to do when they're at the end of their rope and the child is screaming louder and louder.
"You tried to escape," his voice is strung tight but evenly, at least. "Why?"
The boy's screams waver and then increase, sharpening in pitch until Kylo's quite sure he's going to wake up out of this kriffing Force dream with a migraine.
"Stop it," he demands. "Stop crying at once. Right this moment."
Kylo debates whether he should use the Force on the boy. See if perhaps a very, very minor sedatory nudge would break his tantrum. He reaches for him again, scowling as he sees little crescents of dried blood at the tips of Desmond's fingernails.
"STOP!" the child screams, lashing out at him with both slapping hands and a wave of uncontrolled power.
The force of the blast makes Kylo blink rapidly, but he seizes the opportunity and grabs one of the small wrists. Desmond screams again, louder than before if such a thing was possible, and this time the lights in the room flicker twice and the shelf loses its battle with the nail and crashes to the floor.
Kylo glares at it over his shoulder then turns his attention back to the struggling child before him.
"Calm down," he insists, shoving a touch of pressure of the Force into his words.
The effect temporarily numbs him, and the rising thrums of chaos emanating from his prisoner falter and begin to die down.
So that's what happened in here, then? Something had set Desmond off and he'd lost control of his powers? It's not that Kylo can't objectively relate, it would be quite hypocritical of him not to, but… he could have hurt himself. Has already hurt himself, but it could have been much worse. What if he'd managed to collapse the ceiling or send some piece of furniture crashing into himself? His accommodation will need to be changed. This is no longer safe for him.
He'll have to Force-proof a children's room. For a child that doesn't exist. No one said that losing your mind was going to be easy, but Kylo hadn't expected it to be this ridiculous.
The boy's eyes start to sag and glaze, and Kylo pulls back on his influence. He immediately resumes thrashing and howling, but not nearly with the same conviction as before.
"Show me where you're hurt," Kylo demands.
He grips the boy's shoulder steadily with one hand, pointedly ignoring how the cry of protest the action generates. Then he rotates the wrist he's holding onto and uses a controlled push of the Force to make the boy unclench his small fist.
Desmond's palm is littered with cuts. Most are small, but two are deeper and will require attention. The edges of each cut is smooth. Something very sharp must have done this.
"Desmond?" Kylo asks, pushing concern and not anger into his mind.
The boy begins to cry then. It's marginally preferable to the high-pitched shrieking from moments ago. Kylo allows him a few seconds to collect himself before nudging for an answer.
Finally, the boy looks up at him with a tear-swollen face.
'I'm sorry.'
The whisper is soft in Kylo's mind. Even projected, his voice wavers with emotion.
Kylo blinks, relieved that they've finally moved past the 'rolling around the floor screaming' stage of his fit. He looks down at the drying blood on Desmond's palm. He should wrap it in something then send in a medical droid, though the only thing he has on him now is his cowl which he very much doubts would be appreciated.
He drops his grip from the boy's shoulder and reaches behind himself, summoning the cast aside bedsheets that was wadded up by the door. When it flies through the air into his grip, it tinkles. Shards of the broken orb, the toy he had given to Desmond yesterday, fall out and shatter against the tiled floor.
Desmond stares at it then back at him. Kylo can feel his emotions sparking, fear rising in him again and fresh tears starting to fall.
'I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!'
The boy's mental voice raises in pitch. Kylo lets go of him entirely and allows him to shrink back, sitting down on his backside and pulling his knees in close.
"Is that what this was all about?" he knows that he needs to be careful and not say anything too harsh to set all of that off again. "You broke the toy and hurt yourself? Why would I punish you for that?"
The boy won't look at him again. He buries his face in his knees, shoulders shaking with silent tears.
Kylo… wants to rip his own hair out. What did he- what's it going to take?! Why is this damn child acting so unreasonable? Desmond is cringing like he expects to be struck, and yet Kylo has never, ever done a single thing to hurt him.
Except perhaps violently take him away from his home and family and keep him locked up here against his will. Other than that, there is absolutely no reason for this.
Has someone else hurt him before? Beat him as a form of punishment for misbehavior? The thought is so barbaric that he knows that Rey would never allow it.
'You said it was valuable. I didn't mean to break it. I tried to fix it but I couldn't and then it broke in my hand.'
Oh kriff, the boy actually believed him about that. Fuck.
"Desmond, I… I-"
Kylo tries to remember how his mother used to comfort him but only drawing up memories of her and Han shouting at each other while Ben hid in his room with his head under a pillow. Ah, so it's all their fault, then. Good. The reason he's apparently so terrible at pseudo-parenting can squarely be blamed on his own upbringing and not on his current choices. Perfect. It's all their fault, not his.
"I'm not angry," Kylo says.
Desmond doesn't say anything and refuses to even look up. Kylo sighs and changes tactics, going back to speaking into his mind since that seems to bring marginally better results between them.
'Why did you think I would hurt you? I told you that I would never hurt you.'
Why won't he just trust him? Why is that so much to ask? Desmond is only five years old, for kriff's sake. He shouldn't know fear. He should be…
Kylo stops himself short of finishing that thought with 'easy to mould'. He looks down at the child, fighting with himself the growing urge to simply embrace the small body. He has no idea where this impulse is coming from, but it feels like it would be the right thing to do. Hug him and and tell him that yes, he knows that he's miserable company but please compromise a little since he's trying so damn hard.
And he is. Kylo is doing everything her can think of to appease this phantom of his mind. This lost figment that's trying to lead him somewhere but neither of them are capable of comprehending where or what it is.
"Why did you hurt them?"
Desmond's voice is very small. Kylo's palm itches and he has to grip his own knee to keep from reaching out to him.
Before he can ask 'hurt who?' the images come flooding into his mind. There had been times that-
As Kylo Ren, Commander of the First Order, there were times that he had to slaughter families, either by his own hand or as a fallout through his actions. At the time he had told himself that it was a necessary evil. Now… now it would seem that by the very act of repressing these memories he'd been highlighting them as a beacon.
Is this it? Is this why his mind has brought him these dreams? This child is a abstraction. If he had been real, there was no way he would ever have been able to witness these memories. These and others like them are what Kylo keeps at the darkest and most unreachable corners of his psyche.
'I hadn't meant for you to see them.'
It's the only explanation that Kylo can offer.
'Why did you do it?'
There's no justification he can give. He did it and so much worse because he was told to. He could have disobeyed his orders but he chose not to. It's as simple and black and white as that.
Kylo gives in to his impulse then and reaches out, shifting his crouched stance and extending both his arms to box the child in should he try to run. Desmond cringes again, inhaling sharply and Kylo fears that he won't be able to withstand another tantrum like the last one. He would have to wake himself up and, as awful as finally having grown a conscience is, at least he isn't alone anymore in here.
"Please..." he asks plaintively.
He closes his eyes and pictures what he wants. This is his own dream, after all. Will of the Force or progressive decay of his own sanity be damned, Kylo knows that he's in dream and by the gods he's going to learn how to control this.
The child is a limp weight in his arms. Kylo looks down and his expression is dazed, effected too strongly by the strength of the Force that Kylo is pushing into him to keep him calm.
He scoops him up and rises, standing and pacing the small, destroyed room. Already Desmond is trying to fight against him, to use his own blossoming powers to pull away from the Force hold that's numbing him. His weight fluctuates oddly as Kylo tries to guess how much a 5 year old child would weigh. He settles on something heavier because it makes him feel more real, and then he lets go of his influence.
Desmond immediately begins to cry. Humiliation rolls through him. He's embarrassed that he couldn't fight off Kylo's control of him. Which means that he knew that Kylo was doing it. Which means that now he'll be even more afraid of him…
But rather than scream and howl at being seized by a monster, Desmond grabs onto Kylo's arm. He hugs himself to it, burying his face against the crook of the elbow. This poor, lonely boy. So afraid and desperate for comfort that he doesn't care whom he has to take it from.
Something inside Kylo breaks. He gives into the feeling, feeling a deep fissure begin to form in his soul. It cracks right along one of the seams of light and dark, and he lifts Desmond up, holding onto him so firmly so that the boy won't think for even a moment that he's going to let him go. The small dark head rests perfectly against his shoulder, letting Kylo support his weight while hugging him tightly to his own chest.
This is biology. Kylo has never thought once about why a human skeleton is built the way that it is, but now that he's holding a child in his arms it all makes perfect sense. Evolution has designed them to take care of children, and that's never been more clear than with how Desmond's head fits perfectly against the bend of his elbow and Kylo's arms are exactly the right length to hold him tight and protect him. He can comfort him and soothe him and rock him to sleep and this is exactly what he's supposed to do. Even if… even if the child is not his own and isn't even real.
Desmond begins to fade with that thought. His weight, that comforting weight in his arms, begins to dissipate. Kylo knows that he's going to wake up soon. His conscious mind is starting to rise for the day, but he fights it for as long as he can. Desmond has finally stopped crying and is letting himself be held. His young soul is drifting off to sleep just as Kylo's own is stirring awake.
And he holds off, trying to delay the inevitable. Only when Desmond is fully at peace, quiet and dreaming in his arms, does Kylo allow himself to disappear too.
Everything suffers when you don't get enough sleep. Kylo's real life had predictably gone to complete shit.
He can't kriffing concentrate. At night he dreams but he doesn't rest, and by day he's sloppy and unmotivated and sharp with anger.
It should have been a straight forward enough mission: take a few of his knights and a brigade of Stormtroopers and eradicate a village of Resistance sympathizers. This was hardly a difficult mission, and it was intended to be a decisive retaliatory strike to send a clear message to other neutral-but-slanting worlds.
So they'd stormed in and killed and slaughtered until Kylo had to separate himself from the others because that thing was coming back. That voice of guilt in his head. It spoke to him like a small child, not asking him to stop but instead asking the far worse question of why?
Why is he doing this?
Because he has to.
Why is he letting this happen?
Because he was told to and this is the only thing he's worthy of.
Why don't you try and stop this?
Because... he has already made his choices and it's far, far too late.
Cutting down the village's defenses and security had been easy. They had been poorly trained and worse prepared. Truly this was a slaughter and not a battle.
Killing the civilians had been… Kylo had dismissed his Knights and sent them back early. No explanation had been given, and he had felt their thrums of surprise as they disappeared back onto the ship in a shiver of black, leaving nothing but disappointment and unfulfilled bloodlust in their wake. If they had one soul between them, they all hid it well.
The Stormtroopers, at least these ones that Kylo had chosen, were more pragmatic. They shot where he told them to. The deaths they caused would not be on their conscience because they were simply a conduit.
Kylo wishes he could have the same luxury.
They were down to the last few survivors when he found them: a family hiding in the ruins of what had, just an hour before, been their or someone else's home. The two parents and their three young children. Four if you count the small soul growing inside the mother's heavily swollen belly. There had been terror in their eyes as the stormtroopers raised their weapons, but also anger and pride. If they were going to die, they were going to die as a family and they weren't going to beg.
Kylo had stopped the troopers at the last moment and ordered them to leave and secure the next building. These five, these six, he would take care of himself.
That had been the thread of hope the family had been clinging to. The father had broken first, readily begging for his own life to be sacrificed if only the monster before them would spare his wife and children. Kylo had drawn his blade and held it to the man's neck, trying to ignore the chilling screams of the young ones in the background as their mother held them back.
Never before had Kylo been so grateful for his mask.
He had his orders and they had been very clear and succinct. Kill all of them. There weren't many left now. Just this family and a handful of others.
But what would he tell Desmond that night? How would he justify to the child that he had brutally murdered not only the armed opposition, but this simple man and his…
Kylo had held is blade steady, trying to tune out the pleas and the screams and the silent mental plea of the man to just do it and spare them, please spare them…
This man had four children. Four. And Kylo wasn't even allowed to have one. This man kneeling before him was nothing, a useless piece of carbon that would live and breed and die and be forever forgotten. Why is it that he gets to have child after child and Kylo can't even hold onto a figment of his of mind without it disappearing when he touches it?
His grip and wavered then, the tip of his lightsaber fluttering against the useless mans skin and burning him slightly. The children had cried harder. It must have seemed like deliberate torture to them all. The mother, despite the limited mobility at the late stages of her pregnancy, had held them back and tried to shield their eyes, using herself as a shield to protect them from what would surely be all their fate in the next few moments. And she looked so beautiful. Tear stained and on the verge of full on hysterics, but still fighting until the very end.
If he killed the man but let them live, her unborn child would never know his father. This was a war. These things had to be done.
And Kylo would have yet another thing to answer for.
He left them, all of them, departing from their huddled masses with nothing more than a vague and standard threat thrown over his shoulder. No doubt something about how they should think twice about going against the First Order and to tell the others. The words themselves didn't matter, he had more than made his point.
This was enough, he told the Stromtroopers as he called them back to the ship. The mindlessly obedient husks of metal had trundled after him with a clear conscience because they were following orders and it was as simple as that.
What he would give to have the luxury of a life so uncomplicated...
Snoke didn't summon him that night.
Kylo had expected him to. He had failed in his mission, after all, and for no reason than his own weakness and disobedience.
The order into Snoke's Chamber should have came as soon as his boots touched the floor of the station. What would have happened next was unknown, and Kylo hadn't bothered to try and guess to brace himself for it.
Instead, his master did something far crueler and stayed silent in his head. Perhaps he was watching and lurking. Waiting for Kylo to come to him for his punishment. Maybe that would have been the correct action. To willingly accept the fallout for his failure and then learn from it. Maybe he could have argued the point and said that he'd used his best judgment and… and maybe this was another test and he failed it.
Kylo stomps back to his room, sending stormtroopers and officers alike tripping over themselves to get out of his way.
Then he presses his hands to the wall, the one facing closest to where Rey's cell had been, and listens.
Silence.
Nothing from his Master, his grandfather, or his bondmate.
That only leaves one thing left: a meditation session focused on self-reflection. Quiet introspection has never ended well for Kylo, not even once, and today he is positive it will be no different.
He only makes it a few minutes in before falling asleep.
That happens a lot. Kylo really, really hates meditating. Something he and his other half very much have in common.
When Kylo realizes that he's in a dream, he breathes deep and steadies himself. It had been a trying day, he can't face Rey's imaginary son when he's such a mess. His very presence scares the boy enough, no reason to add onto that with proof of his rising insanity.
And if Desmond really is a manifestation of a latent conscience… well then, it's going to need every tiny molecule of help it can get.
Kylo has a gift for him, too. He'd been thinking about it in the corners of his mind during the earliest parts of his day before everything went to shit, musing off and on what to offer the child to make up for their last meeting together. He had actually been looking forward to this moment, as strange and irrational as that may sound.
So it comes as a great deal of surprise when his dream pulls him in the opposite direction of Desmond's cell. He follows the impulse, surrendering without complaint to seeing whatever the Force is so hell bent on showing him.
The journey to the station's hold is vague. One moment Kylo had left his quarters, and the next he is surrounded by long shelves stretching from one end of the vast room to the other. During the siege where they had taken Desmond away from Rey and Poe, a few of his belongings had been brought with him. This was standard protocol for high level prisoners. Kylo should have remembered this much earlier, except his mind was apparently breaking and details were starting to slip through the cracks.
There wasn't much in a crate that was simply marked with Desmond's prisoner number. Kylo doesn't even know his middle name. Or his last. Though, considering how Rey has no last name to pass on, more than likely it was 'Desmond -blank- Dameron' and Kylo prefers the anonymity of not knowing over the ugly truth.
A few toys and a datapad. That was all. Kylo wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he had hoped for more.
The datapad is locked but all it takes is a simple swipe of the Force to override it. Ah, this is much better. There are many shows and movies and books loaded onto it. No more guessing which piece of First Order propaganda would be the least objectionable to a 5 year old.
He'll bring this to him shortly, and it will be a great weight off his resting mind, but it's the pictures that truly draw Kylo's attention.
They are… everything he was afraid of. Everything he hadn't wanted to see. Rey, Poe, and their son, all three posing like a happy family. Resistance rags and pilot's insignia and little boy lost all together, smiling at the camera. Probably Skywalker or the Traitor had taken the photo. It couldn't be more revolting.
Kylo is about to turn the datapad off, there are limits to even his own masochism, when a tiny and easily overlooked detail catches his eye. Dameron has his arms tightly around Rey in the photo, but he's not embracing his own son. Instead, he merely has a hand resting on Desmond's shoulder. Kylo himself has held the boy more warmly than that, and he barely even knows the child. This is a family photo, for kriffsake, if there ever was a time to show affection than-
Why is the Force showing him this? It's cruel. Cruel and unnecessary.
Han had been a cold and distant father when Ben's powers had started to develop, but surely Rey wouldn't allow such behavior around her own child, boy's father or not?
And yet there she was, smiling and oblivious, leaving Kylo alone to read between the lines.
Desmond deserves better. He needs to be protected from this. He needs to be raised closely and taught to never be afraid of what he is. He will grow up to be a god among the worthless, not a boy who has to hide his powers in the shadows lest he scare away people who couldn't possibly understand.
Kylo quickly swipes the image on the screen away, unable to stand looking at it for any longer.
There were other photos on the datapad as well, and these were far less objectionable than the first. Hazy, foggy pictures of Desmond as he is now and then as he was when he was younger. The images take their time coming into focus, Kylo's mind trying different brush strokes and colors patterns until it settles on what probably might have been.
That morning, that real morning, Kylo had researched pregnancy. It had been a momentary lapse of reason, nothing more. But there had been an image attached to an article of a pretty, glowing young mother holding her newborn baby.
It takes only a small leap of Kylo's imagination to turn that woman into Rey.
She would look tired in the picture, but so very happy. Beaming bright as the sun despite her exhaustion and with a tiny little wrapped bundle in her arms. Kylo decides to have a small tuft of dark hair curl out from the edges of Desmond's wrappings because Leia had once said that he- that Ben- had been born with a full head of hair. It made for a truly beautiful family picture. So perfect that it eased the sting of the first image.
And no Poe here. No hated pilot to ruin the scene. Maybe he was the one taking the picture, or maybe he hadn't even bothered to be there for his son's birth. Either way, Kylo wouldn't have been surprised.
What else? What more would he really want to see?
He had missed out on it all, every moment of Desmond's life until now and every moment that Rey had carried him inside her.
What would she have looked like?
Kylo's dream wavers slightly at that thought. It was beyond a violation. He shouldn't be thinking about this at all. Even if he knows that none of this is real, it still feels so… forbidden.
Would she have looked like that woman today? The one that he'd spared simply because he was too weak not to?
He'd thought she was beautiful, too. A strong woman who would do anything to protect her children, no matter how horrible the odds. Rey would look like that. She would look better. Stronger. More… more his.
The thought had come unbidden, but now that it's been cast it cascades through Kylo's mind with a force, breaking down all his objections and attempts at self control.
Unlike guessing at Desmond's appearance as a baby, the image of Rey full and pregnant comes to Kylo so easily. In some dark corner of his mind he'd been thinking about this for nearly as long as he'd known her.
She was slim and muscular, so her bump would be quite small. Desmond would have sat quite high in her belly, and it wouldn't have been until she was several months along that she would show at all. But when she did it would be with a roundness that would be welcomed wholeheartedly by them both. A new curve shaping her slight frame that would be at the perfect height and size for Kylo to support with his hands when he embraced her from behind.
The thought of that, of feeling her skin tight and muscles firming with the swell of their child together-
No.
This has to stop.
Right now.
This time, Kylo throws himself out of his dream. Tears his way through the layers of his resting psyche until he can open his eyes.
His room is dark. The lights have turned themselves off with the night cycle which can only mean that he was like this, slumped over uncomfortably in the meditation stance, for many more hours than he had intended.
And he hadn't even been allowed to see the child. Allowed to try and make peace with his new morality. Instead, he'd ruined the Force vision with-
Dear gods, trust his own mind to sully something so pure like that. To twist a fantasy of their perfect union into something depraved.
He should be disgusted with himself- he is disgusted with himself - but that doesn't stop his body from reacting to his dream. By the time he untangles his stiff and painful limbs from their crossed positioning, his lower half is aching with unrequited desire.
He won't do anything about that. He refuses to. And it takes him far longer than it should under the coldest setting of his fresher until the feeling of need subsides.
Great. Perfect. Now instead of just 'lunatic' he can add 'deranged pervert' to his mental downward spiral.
This is going to be a long few days. Kylo can't imagine that ti will take much longer for his mind to crack in half.
Right now, the peace of insanity can't come fast enough.
Author's Note:
Possessive creeper much? Gotta catch up the plot to those tags, though don't expect anything too racy for this fic (and I've got plenty of raunchy smut out there enough as it is). And I know it's a little heavy handed on the imagery here, but hey, Kylo is a bit of a drama queen. Angst looks good on him.
Next chapter:
The problem with going down the rabbit hole is you never know if you're going to come out at the same place.
