The first time Kylo stepped out of the Porter building, still too mildly dazed and confused for any significant depth of anger, he'd stepped into a new world. Snatched up from defeat, he'd been pulled, processed and spat out into a completely different reality, left to stumble through the process of discovering what of all the noise and frustration he was left with, when the purpose that had shaped his entire existence was stripped away.
The second time, he'd been ripped from a moment of triumph. Snoke dead, the memory of how it had felt to fight with someone rather than against them so fresh in his mind— but even then, it had only been a matter of readjusting his new life on Earth to accommodate additional memory of the former, extending it by the length of a day or so. Two stories, one following the other.
There's too much to fit into one story, the third time he arrives, and he can't seem to put everything in order. The messy tangle of his distant childhood remains a numbed, softened weight, but the rest is a puzzle of too many pieces. He remembers three conclusions to his time as a boy hoping to be a jedi, now— the betrayal of a botched assassination, an abduction into a world darker than this one, and the dream of a miraculous rescue that somehow came true. He doesn't know which is the most real. He does know which he most wants to continue.
He's afraid to reach at first, not knowing what it could mean if he tries and finds nothing there but silence. Which of the reasons to receive no answer would be worse: a world without Ronan, or a world without the choice he had made?
Kylo gets about as far as Rey had before when she summoned him here by mistake. The memory of Ronan flashing into existence at his side pours through his head, so rich and strong he can almost feel his arm coiling around him in warm, solid reassurance, hear the words murmured in his ear. It's what he wants. All he wants. And for a moment, the yearning feels more like a message he's receiving than something that coils and aches in his own heart, and Kylo thinks, worse than either of the silences he might receive would be the knowledge that his fear had permitted Ronan to believe himself abandoned, even for a second.
He closes his eyes, forces out a breath, and calls.
By fortuitous co-incidence on February 9th:
The second time, he'd been ripped from a moment of triumph. Snoke dead, the memory of how it had felt to fight with someone rather than against them so fresh in his mind— but even then, it had only been a matter of readjusting his new life on Earth to accommodate additional memory of the former, extending it by the length of a day or so. Two stories, one following the other.
There's too much to fit into one story, the third time he arrives, and he can't seem to put everything in order. The messy tangle of his distant childhood remains a numbed, softened weight, but the rest is a puzzle of too many pieces. He remembers three conclusions to his time as a boy hoping to be a jedi, now— the betrayal of a botched assassination, an abduction into a world darker than this one, and the dream of a miraculous rescue that somehow came true. He doesn't know which is the most real. He does know which he most wants to continue.
He's afraid to reach at first, not knowing what it could mean if he tries and finds nothing there but silence. Which of the reasons to receive no answer would be worse: a world without Ronan, or a world without the choice he had made?
Kylo gets about as far as Rey had before when she summoned him here by mistake. The memory of Ronan flashing into existence at his side pours through his head, so rich and strong he can almost feel his arm coiling around him in warm, solid reassurance, hear the words murmured in his ear. It's what he wants. All he wants. And for a moment, the yearning feels more like a message he's receiving than something that coils and aches in his own heart, and Kylo thinks, worse than either of the silences he might receive would be the knowledge that his fear had permitted Ronan to believe himself abandoned, even for a second.
He closes his eyes, forces out a breath, and calls.