CHAPTER TWO
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The Supreme Leader is wise, but Kylo Ren finds within a week under Snoke's tutelage that wisdom does not beget kindness.
First Order soldiers restrain him and question him about his mother and father, about Master Luke. He gives up everything regarding his uncle easily enough, but he can't bring himself to betray his parents the same way. When his answers fail to satisfy the stormtroopers they hurt him. First with their hands, then with blunt batons, and finally with needles that dig deep into his skin and send shocks of electricity throughout his body. It's the last that breaks him; he confesses what little he knows, and when this still isn't enough to keep the pain at bay, he makes up stories, lies through his teeth, anything to stop the torture.
Two days later, as he lies in a bed in the medbay, Kylo cries like a boy by another name and thinks, What have I done?
This was a mistake, but it's too late to go back now. He's already killed for Snoke, helped the other Knights slaughter his fellow Jedi initiates, destroying the new order his uncle had worked so hard to rebuild. He tries not to think about that, the scents of rain and blood and cauterized flesh, how his lightsaber thrummed in his hand as he cut down his comrades.
He's summoned to appear before the Supreme Leader the day he leaves the medbay. Stormtroopers escort him to an audience chamber where he finds Snoke sitting alone in the shadows. Some ominous presence ripples through the Force around him, a darkness deeper than any Kylo has ever felt.
The Supreme Leader is a skeletal man, scarred and twisted and bent, but still tall and intimidating for all the suffering he bears so visibly on his face. When he speaks, Kylo recognizes that this is the voice that seduced him from afar. Appearing in his dreams, haunting his every step for years. Promising power, acceptance, a true family.
Now Snoke puts his hand in Kylo's hair, pets him, and says, "I'm sorry that we had to question you, but it was an unfortunate necessity. You're strong, though—stronger than you understand yet, Kylo Ren."
He says nothing, unsure of how to react to gentleness coming from this man.
"You think you've made a mistake. You regret forsaking the light," Snoke says smoothly, confidently, but without judgement. "You always doubt, don't you, Kylo? You're never sure if you can trust yourself, whether your choices are sound, are right."
"Yes, Supreme Leader," Kylo whispers, and he feels a warm flush coloring his cheeks.
"There's no need to worry about such things further," Snoke promises. "From now on, you are an instrument of my will. Your hand is mine, moving in the world, carrying out my orders."
This tempts him, but Kylo isn't eager to exchange his freedom for power and peace of mind. Perhaps if he could find some way off of this base, Mom would still forgive him…
"You have no mother, no father. Ben Solo was the son of Han and Leia, but Ben Solo is dead. You killed him the moment you took up your lightsaber against the other Jedi," Snoke says. He cups Kylo's chin, lifts his face upward, and smiles down at him softly, almost benevolently. "Even if I were to let you leave, where would you go? Who in the whole of this galaxy would welcome you, besides me?"
No one, Kylo realizes. No one at all.
"Stand," Snoke says, and he rises to his feet.
The Supreme Leader cups his face in his hands, and all at once he feels overwhelmed by a rush of cold. It's the darkness emanating from Snoke, so strong that Kylo could almost choke on it. But there's something cleansing about standing in the presence of such power. It's like being drowned in a wave of freezing water and then coming up for air, washed and reborn anew.
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A dozen armed Resistance fighters release Kylo from his restraints and shepherd him to a larger cell that boasts a bed, a toilet, and a 'fresher. He considers Force choking a few of the soldiers, just for the sake of giving the his mother a mess to handle, but he doesn't especially feel like being shot today.
The cot's mattress feels like it's made of duracrete, he has no blanket, and the cell's bright lights never dim. Still, he sleeps for a few hours, too exhausted to care about any of this.
Kylo waits for the interrogators to come and tries to prepare himself for torture. He isn't a fifteen-year-old child anymore. Now he knows how to tolerate pain—he had to learn, with Snoke for a master. He understands how to channel his suffering into power instead of allowing it to cripple him. But no one questions him again. No one visits him at all for days, except to bring him simple meals and clean clothes.
He makes a half-dozen plans for escaping, but each one seems less plausible than the last. He may have to wait for a good opportunity to present itself.
Until then, Kylo remains bored and lonely. He has only one distraction, a warm presence in the Force, a blue light that he can sense flitting across the Resistance base. Rey. He's felt her for the last year, if distantly, with so many stars scattered between the two of them, so subtle that it would be easy to overlook. But ever since she read his mind her vibrant energy is too powerful to miss. He's aware of her, every hour of every day, and sometimes he can even feel a trace of her emotions: joy, worry, frustration, fear, guilt.
He's showering when he hears the metal door open. Kylo rinses himself, turns off the water, and looks over his shoulder at Rey. He knew it was her, could feel her presence as she made her way across the base, then down ten levels to his cell.
Now she's staring pointedly at the floor. He steps out of the transparisteel stall, wraps a towel around his waist, and asks, "So, when are the interrogators coming?"
Her gaze flicks away from the floor, but instead of meeting his eyes, she looks him up and down. Rey blushes, a pretty pinkness that colors her cheeks, and her lips part just a little, like she means to say something but can't find her words.
It strikes him, then, just how young she is. Twenty or twenty-one, he'd guess. Kylo wonders if she's ever seen a naked man before.
Rey shakes her head a little, as if to clear it, and says, "They're not."
"So you're here to probe my mind?" he asks.
Rey wraps her arms around her middle. "No. I'm never doing that again."
"Then what do you want with me?"
"I—I don't know," she says.
"That's a lie. You do, but you don't want to tell me." Kylo leans against the cold durasteel wall and waits for her to speak.
Rey takes a step forward, a step closer to him, but she pulls back. "I can sense you now," she admits. "Your presence in the Force, even your feelings."
"I know," he says, crossing his arms over his chest. "That goes both ways."
"Well what is it? And how do we get rid of it?" Rey asks.
"You could have talked to Luke about this, but I imagine you were too ashamed to tell my uncle," Kylo says. "Is that about right?"
Rey scowls. "Just answer the question."
"I think it's a Force bond. Which used to be common between Jedi masters and their apprentices." He can't help but smirk at her. "Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something, Rey."
"I don't want the kind of guidance you have to offer," she says. "I don't want anything to do with you."
Kylo walks toward her, and in just three strides he's closed most of the space between them. "You wouldn't be here if that was true."
Rey tenses, poised like a bird ready to take flight, but she doesn't step backward. She's too proud for that, he expects. Her gaze drops from his face to his shoulders, his waist, and lingers before flitting away. He can feel her reaction to his body, the spark of desire that strikes her, unwelcome and overwhelming.
She wants him, and Kylo is so surprised by this realization that he reaches out, wanting to touch her, to make this connection between them tactile. Rey lets him cup her cheek, but she turns her face into his hand, eyes closed, like she's trying to conceal herself from him.
"You can't hide," he whispers. "I feel what you feel."
Rey steps away from him, breaking contact. She hurries to the exit, puts her thumb against the print-reader, and the door opens a moment later. He catches the sight of a half-dozen uniformed guards before the door slams closed after her. The sound of metal on duracrete echoes around his cell for a heartbeat, emphasizing the silence that widens in its wake.
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Kylo hates being trapped like an animal in a cage for endless days that run into one another, unchanging and empty. He's used to solitude, but not total isolation, and the monotony of being sequestered like this is driving him crazy. There's little enough in his cell that isn't bolted to the ground, but in a fit of frustration he uses the Force to rip his cot from the floor and hurl it at the wall. The noise attracts his guards, who make the mistake of opening the door and pointing their blasters at him. He Force chokes three of them at once, then freezers the laser shot of the fourth.
Kylo injures nine guards in his escape attempt, but he makes it no further than the eighth floor before he's overwhelmed by Resistance soldiers. It's FN-2187 who hits him in the temple with the butt of his blaster, knocking him out.
He comes to with a pounding headache, the whole right side of his face throbbing and tender, on a hard cot in a new cell. Now his hands are cuffed, bound together by freezing manacles that bite into his wrists. He wants to scream, to destroy everything in this room, but he knows it would do him no good.
So instead, Kylo turns on his side, facing the wall, curls into himself, and tries to sleep. He dreams of Dad, his roguish face grown old and grey, but still so vibrant—until the lightsaber ignited in his hands and extinguished his father's life.
Kylo wakes, shaking and slicked with sweat, his arms aching from the weight of the handcuffs on his wrists. All he can see is red and all he can smell is the scent of burning flesh and blood. He feels the weight of this, his worst deed, heavy in his bones, sinking like a stone in his stomach. What was the point? Killing Han Solo was supposed to make him stronger, free him from the yoke of the light. But now he's a true prisoner, surrounded by enemies, too weak to break his way out, and Kylo only hates himself for making such a great sacrifice.
He half hopes that his attempt at fleeing will inspire his mother to have him executed. Death would be preferable to this lonely life, to a secluded existence that gives him no relief from the memory of his mistakes.
He holds out no hope that the Supreme Leader will send a rescue party. Snoke values power above all else, and if Kylo is too weak to see after himself, then his master no longer has any use for him. This hurts in its own way, to have his loyal service and dedication dismissed. The Supreme Leader may be cruel, but he gave him the sort of attention and approval that Ben Solo had always craved from his family. Craved, but rarely received.
He stands and paces his cell, thinking about Snoke. The man who raised him out of boyhood and taught him how to harness the darkness inside of himself. Whose tutelage made training into bitter work full of pain, whose guidance molded him into the man he's become. Snoke's voice seduced him away from his family and the ever-elusive light. Kylo has grown used to its presence, commanding and directing him for thirty years.
But now he hears nothing from the Supreme Leader. There's only silence, as wide as the light years separating him from Snoke, and he knows that his master has abandoned him.
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Mom visits him three days after his escape attempt. This time she comes without Rey, but she's accompanied by so many armed soldiers that Kylo doesn't even bother to count them all. He recognizes one as Poe Dameron, the pilot he interrogated aboard Hux's ship. Dameron glares at him, but he says nothing.
Kylo stands, and his mother looks at his chafed wrists, reddened and bruised by the manacles, concern coloring her brown eyes.
She turns to the tallest of her soldiers, holds out her hand, and says, "The key."
The man frowns, but he gives her a slender pin, which she uses to unlock the cuffs binding Kylo's wrists. Then she takes his hands in hers, and he stiffens at her touch. She's grown older in the years since he last saw her, but no less beautiful, no less regal, and the softness with which she still looks at him makes him feel like a boy again.
Somehow, she still wants to believe that there's light in him, even after all he's done, and the weight of her hope makes him sick to his stomach, because she's wrong. He murdered the last of his own goodness along with Dad, destroyed any chance of absolution when he took his father's life.
It was all for nothing, though, because far from making him stronger, Kylo was weakened by his choice. And now he stands imprisoned in a Resistance cell, left for dead by the master he sacrificed everything for.
"Leave us," she says to her entourage.
Dameron steps forward. "But, General, he's too dangerous to—"
"That was an order, Poe, not a request," she says sharply.
The soldiers file out of the cell, Dameron clearly reluctant but too loyal to fight further, and Kylo has to respect the obedience she inspires in her troops.
Once they're alone, Mom reaches up and holds his cheeks between her hands. Her eyes brighten with tears as she traces the edge of his scar with her thumb. "Oh, Ben," she whispers, her husky voice roughened. "Why did you do it?"
There's only one thing his mother can mean, and Ben has to close his eyes to shut out the sight of her beloved face twisted with grief. His parents always loved as fiercely as they fought, and in a single moment of selfish desperation on Starkiller, he stole her husband from her.
"I can't be what you want me to be," he says, pulling away from her touch.
She shakes her head. "You're wrong. You can still be a good man. I know it."
"Is this the part where you compel me to talk? To betray the Supreme Leader?" Kylo asks, because if he doesn't turn this back to business he's going to fall apart.
Mom scowls and holds out her hands. "Why protect Snoke when he's done nothing to help you? You were never anything but a tool to him. A source of power to exploit for his own ends. And now that we have you, now that you're no longer useful, he's cutting his losses."
He can see the truth of this easily enough, but it doesn't matter what he means to Snoke, because the Supreme Leader told him from the beginning that he was simply an instrument.
"I want to help you, Ben, but I can't free you as long as you're a risk to my people," she says. "Cooperate with us. Redeem yourself."
Her offer is as tempting as any he's ever known, but he can't accept it. Kylo grips his aching wrist, fingers biting into the bruised flesh, and the sharp pain of it centers him, calms him, and gives him the strength to say, "No."
She nods, then leaves him alone in his cell.
Once she's gone, he sits on the edge of his cot, head in his hands, and rocks back and forth, back and forth, his breathing shallow and staggered. He's given everything to the Supreme Leader, and if he betrays him now it will all have been in vain.
What does it matter that Snoke only saw him as a means to an end? Kylo has never been fit for anything more than being used. He's known this since he was a child, and it's as true now as it was then.
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