Isn't it?
"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
Oscar Wilde
He is usually deeply unsettled on meetings like these. Often he has a sudden urge to jump to the window and stare and count the TIE fighters flying off (imagining he is in one of them) or roam through the dark recesses of his mind. Every time he sits, his knee starts jolting with nervous energy, infecting everyone around him with the same uneasiness.
But now, he sinks into his chair. His thoughts follow through every single one of their reports. He examines the faces of the men surrounding him and scrutinizes their secret thoughts and hidden desires. Who covets what? That one desires the position of his commanding officer. The other one wants the estates of his political enemy. The communication officer is more menial – he desires the wife of a rich local overlord and plots his assassination with her (how convenient). Everything is about power, unless it is sex – then it's about power. The general at his side wants the Jedi dead – he's afraid after what he's witnessed yesterday and now ponders if it is possible to kill someone so powerful (noted). The other general believes that Jedi is turned and thinks they managed to surpass the glory of the Empire (noted, too).
The Chiss officers, solemn and blue-skinned, are the easiest to read if there is any need to read them at all – they want incessant war and fulfillment of their ambitions.
His mind wanders off a little bit further.
Resistance? Those people are weary and battered. Many of them spent years in hiding, separated from their families – if they still have one. Many went back to their ruined homes, obliterated by civil war. The pilot – in hiding, messing around with Kanji Gang and other space junk smugglers (he now fully understands why he finds this particular rebel so repugnant). Is he planning a guerilla attack? No, he's buying medical supplies and agricultural machines. Should we arrest him for illegal activity? Then we should arrest half of the galaxy.
Is the base on Crait obliterated and dismantled? Yes. Let me see. Good.
Would that be all, officers?
Yes, Supreme Leader.
Good. To your posts.
He goes to that old place by the window and flexes just a bit. He somehow feels at peace. He was dead when he was exalted as Supreme Leader, but now his joints seem to be falling back into their place.
The day was unusually sunny and bright for Coruscant. Probably his weather engineers, struggling to decontaminate the surface of heavily polluted planet. Only thing they couldn't tame was that wind, supposed to purge the command center from toxic fumes – it was howling against the windows.
The command room overlooks a long cascade of turrets and platforms and lower floors and landing pods. It is a majestic view – Emperor made even a vast artificial lake for no other purpose than lavishness and meditation. It would reflect the night sky and many glistening sparks of space ships hyper-jumping. Now it reflected the bright-blue sky and smeared light clouds.
And as he meditated on the surface of that make-shift water, his eyes narrowed. His heart twitched. His fists clenched, gloves stretching to a breaking point.
There was a solitary figure firmly striding over the platform bellow and across the narrow bridge to the turret directly overlooking the lake.
She was clad in long floating dress.
Light grey, pearly grey.
Had he not seen the reactions of the droids and the officers passing by, he'd be certain he's seeing ghosts or hallucinating.
"Inform me about anything regarding the Resistance or the Mandalorian uprising", he ordered. "I'll be… in training center".
He descended to the platform and from there he went straight to the turret, officers avoiding him and bowing their heads.
It is layers upon layers of light-grey silk chiffon (he grew up surrounded with aristocracy – he knows). There is no elaborate head-piece, but there is a shawl as a natural extension of that dress that she wears on her head. (It's windy and he thinks he could see her shivering.)
Why is she not noticing his presence?
Ah, the lake – the little scavenger girl is still transfixed with great water.
But there is something else. She seems absent-minded, almost languid. Perhaps it's the aftermath of the duel, but she appears softer now than before.
He has conflicting feelings about her – there is a part of him that wants to embrace her and cover her with his cape and shower her with tenderness and care. And there is a part of him that wants to fold her in half and fuck her senseless until he yanks the whole damn planet out of its orbit.
Focus.
The former would probably be him, the weak one, Ben Solo. The latter would be Kylo Ren. He wanted her to rule with him, to set all of this anew. The whole damn lot of them – the Sith, the Jedi, the Resistance, the Empire and the Republic – it means nothing anymore (except for his sexual fantasies, apparently). There are only him and her now. Only if she could see that – only if she could let the Jedi ways go.
He has to snap out of this.
Only then she turns and sees him, but she practically looks more through him. Her demeanor is softened. Something is changed. All sternness is absent from her looks, all that righteous decisiveness is put aside.
What has happened? Has he inadvertently broken her with politics, with public display and with that mock-fight?
Oh, no, he didn't – he heard about her smashing the droid, breaking the disc. He would grin, but there is something solemn about her still. He doesn't want to spoil the moment. Her, bathing in the sun in her swirling long delicate dress, the ends of her hair dancing in the wind around her face.
For a moment, she doesn't wish to talk. The sight of the lake is too beautiful. It makes her feel at peace. Her ring corresponds to the color of that lake. There is something almost blissful in this place, when she turns her back on the First Order and the command center carved in black stone, when she pretends they do not exist and that she is the last remaining person on the whole planet.
And he complies with that wish.
It is truly beautiful. Beautiful things can be found in strange places. Evil made some of the most beautiful spectacles in the galaxy. Did she see the flickering lights of a dying star caught in the gravitational field of a black hole? Probably not. Maybe one day he'll take her to see the Hero Twins, or the Tannhauser Gate?
"I trashed your droid", she says eventually.
I ruined your sheets.
"So I've heard", he retorts.
I took your virginity in my dream and then I masturbated over your mental image while you were still asleep.
"What?" She turns around and blinks.
"What?" He raises his eyebrows.
But he soon composes himself. She didn't hear him, thanks to whoever has a jurisdiction over these things. And perhaps no one, for that matter: Sith were regarded as gods by some primitive nations, so were the Jedi. But neither were deities, only Force users.
There is only Force, the old credo goes through his head like a virus.
His vision catches the glimpse of the warlords and weapon traders negotiating with his officers on the lake-shore. Pests.
"Do you want to perform another spectacle?"
"I am not a circus freak, Ren", she answers with a low growl.
"Ren" – he blinks. She rarely called him that. He was "Ben". He tolerated only her calling him that.
But Ren sounds like he wanted it to sound – threatening and impersonal. A battle cry, a wailing of millions. He should make her call him My Lord, or Supreme Leader. He should make her scream My Lord while he's unloading into her.
Focus.
"It is not a spectacle – it's a lesson", he replied. "Pull the water from the lake. Play with it. Make the plebs gasp".
She turns to him. Ah, that old gaze is back, that old look on her face. The determination, the fire, the righteous decisiveness.
Crait. She did it on Crait. It was her finest hour – it was their darkest hour.
Lifting rocks like they were nothing – but she had a strong purpose then.
The saber on his side shudders.
Don't do it, Rey.
Yes, do it, Jedi. Yank it. Break the treaty. Give me the reason.
Her thoughts almost form an expletive and then she turns to the lake.