maskormenacelogs | i think there's a flaw in my code

The thud is resounding and very familiar (because this is apparently a household of people who shuts off their water with a bang). But Kylo invites him in, Murphy just barely touched the door with his knuckles.

There was no, "Hey, it's Murphy"; Kylo already knew, just how he knew someone was approaching before Murphy even knocked. The door opens a moment later, and a gangly Murphy slides right in, but he does say, "Hey." A slight pause, attention ticked down to Kylo's state of dress - the lack thereof.

Face. Murphy remembers and his eyes flick to Kylo's face. He also remembers that Kylo had been gone for longer than he should have been. Murphy moves forward, quickly broaching Kylo's personal space to throw his arms around him in a quick and tight embrace. Murphy missed him. "Don't do that shit again." He pulls back, scrutinizing the features of Kylo's face.

There is an exceptionally short list of people who could touch Kylo Ren like that and not find themselves firmly embedded in the wall a split second later— if, indeed, they lived to find themselves anywhere at all. But Murphy's one of them.

Stiff and rigidly uncomfortable at first, he relents in the space of a heartbeat to allow himself Murphy's welcome. His arm lifts to wrap around his back, though by that point Murphy's already moving on to examine his face. Is he looking for fresh damage? Changes? He won't find any. All Kylo's returned with this time is a deeper understanding of a path he has no way of following, this side of an interdimensional rift.

Kylo's lips quirk.
"I'm pleased to be back, too," he says. "I hear it didn't take long for the world to fall apart without me."

He is looking for a change, any kind of it. The look in Kylo's eyes, seeing if they've remembered his face. But it had to be me, how Kylo let Murphy touch him like that, with an affectionate embrace.

Murphy smirks, a crooked one, following Kylo's.

"Yeah a whole bunch of shit happened," he says, tone flattened. "I woke up and everyone left the Barns. I hung out with Kavinsky mostly." And then he went to visit Beck, but Murphy thought it wise to leave that part out. "Made sure Ronan's babies were sleeping okay."

Kylo considers Murphy's face. Or, perhaps more accurately, while his dark eyes study Murphy's face and everything that lies behind it, he considers what he would like to say. Which of all the words he could choose might carry meaning in a way most likely to be understood by John Murphy? This John Murphy. This person, who clearly cares more than he would like it known, but doesn't know how to receive or even recognise it for himself.

It's not easy for Kylo, seeing echoes of his own struggles like this. And on an echo of Ronan's face, too. The pause before his reply stretches a little too far to be comfortable.

"You felt abandoned," he offers eventually. But before the word is even out of his mouth, he knows it's not quite right, and— "No," he corrects. "Unnecessary. You felt unnecessary."

Abandoned.

Unnecessary.

Yes, that was the perfect word for how he had felt. Unnecessary. It was Murphy's turn to draw out the silence now, letting himself mull over what he wants to say. If there was anything else to say other than yes.

He chews the inside of his cheek, eyes falling away from Kylo's face. "Yeah, I felt like no one needed me." No one liked a liar in this house and Murphy wasn't going to lie. Even if he did, Kylo would have known still.

"It's — I'm over it." Not a total lie, but it wasn't the truth either.

Murphy can't see Kylo's expression soften slightly, downcast eyes missing the subtle shift as Kylo watches him chew over his hurt. Over it doesn't exactly match the way Murphy reacts when Kylo calls the wound by name, does it? It seems far more likely to Kylo that Murphy has simply stashed this latest in a long line of miseries somewhere it can't be heard.

And hurt hidden away in the dark with nothing but its jailer for company has a way of souring into resentment.

"They're not the same thing," Kylo says after another mildly uncomfortable pause, waiting until he has Murphy's attention to explain what he means. "—needed, and wanted. Necessary and accepted. You don't see it, yet. Which is why you won't like it, when I tell you that no, Ronan doesn't need you, John."

But he's not finished.
Before Murphy can interrupt or argue, Kylo gives him a question to answer instead:

"Why is it, of everything you could want to be, that you want so desperately to be useful?"

Somehow, when Kylo says it— even in the mildly curious and carefully leveled tone he slips into when attempting to be nurturing— useful becomes a word with far more negative than positive connotations.

The first cut is Kylo saying Ronan doesn’t need Murphy. It stings more than Murphy had ever thought it would. Crushing, really. His sadness coils tight around his chest. The second one comes in the shape of his name, John. But it means a lot, being called by his first name. There’s such pain in John. There’s also love. Bittersweet.

To Murphy, being wanted or needed equated to how much you were worth, how much love you’d be receiving. If you weren’t useful if you weren’t wanted, then what was the point of it all? The last thing Murphy had come here to do was talk about this.

It makes him grow defensive, upset. “You don’t understand.” But, funnily enough, Kylo was one definitely did understand, wholeheartedly.

“No one cares about people who aren’t useful. They’ll let them die. Friendships end over that shit. Everything ends over that shit, being unwanted. No one cares about that person.” And Murphy had always been that person. “You saw it. What they did to me. That’s what happens. You die.”

"I saw it," Kylo agrees.

But that's all he agrees with. He holds Murphy's gaze steadily, unshaken by his defensive outburst. It isn't, as much as Murphy might feel otherwise, comfort that he needs, now. It's freedom from this lie his experiences have taught him to believe. Kylo will cut him free of it now, if he'll let him. He sees no reason it should be allowed to persist any longer.

"I saw what they did to you. What they have always done to you. And I saw what you did, hoping it would protect you, hoping it would earn you protection. You offered your service. Your loyalty. Your knife. You made yourself useful. And so, he did what masters always do, with people who want to be useful. He used you. And then he discarded you all the same. It isn't the answer, John. Do you see it? Being useful. Needed. Necessary. It doesn't make them care about you. Only what they can get from you."

It's a speech delivered with a growing urgency, a bitter kind of passion that suggests Kylo's speaking from an experience that overlaps with Murphy's in ways he hasn't necessarily disclosed— he doesn't like to expose his own wounds or the ways he was deformed and shaped by them. He draws himself back into the moment with a measured breath, adding only:

"Let go of necessary. It won't give you the control you want."

"If I let go of it, then what do I have left?" It's scary, letting go of things you've held onto for most of your life. Clinging to it, suffocating in it. And now Kylo is telling him to let that go, the only thing he's had for so long.

Necessary. Wanted. Needed. Loved. They all a tangled mess in his head and Murphy's never tried to tease it out. His jaw visibly tenses when he clenches his teeth, trying to ebb away the tears that threaten to roll down his cheek.

"I was loyal to you." Murphy's talking about their other life. Murphy was a lieutenant then, too. It was much different; Kylo never tried to hang him. "Is that what you were doing? Using me?" Murphy hadn't come here for this conversation. He didn't come here to be flayed like this. This isn't the kind of reunion that Murphy was expecting.

"In the City? Only as much as you were using me," Kylo points out, eyes locked on Murphy's face. It's a delicate operation, this. He can see the trembling edge of misery threatening to break Murphy's resolve— it would be so easy for him to slide into defensive despondency here.

Kylo won't let him.

"John," he says, the barest hint of something fond in his voice. And for once, it's Kylo who offers reassurance... or, at least, his own interpretation of it, complete with a physical connection to remind Murphy where he is. Here, in Kylo and Ronan's bedroom at the Meadows, where he'd been welcomed without condition.

He reaches out, broad hands grasping Murphy's shoulders, seeking his undivided attention.

"Do you think I need you? Is that why you're welcome here? Is it your usefulness that had me fighting an army of the undead to reach you? Is that the reason Ronan and I cut through that vision of your past to cut you free? No. You can't buy my loyalty by proving yourself useful, John— because you already have it."

Kylo's lips quirk.

"That's what you will have left if you let go: exactly what you had before."

It's hard not to steer his gaze away from Kylo, it's like he physically held his attention. Murphy doesn't say anything, knowing that Kylo is right. His lips purse, jaw visibly tenses at his grinding of teeth.

Murphy's angry, it's etched into his eyebrows, the anger rests on his lips. He's angry at himself. He's angry at Kylo for caring this much. More than Murphy could haven imagined Kylo having for him.

"I was only welcomed here because I was here before," Murphy murmurs. He wants to fight this because, for some reason, he wants to be right about something so miserable.

A second later, relenting, "I want to let it go. I'm so tired." His voice cracks; he lets out a sigh, trying to steel himself.

Kylo's not concerned about Murphy's anger. Why would he be? He knows where it comes from. It's the reaction that makes the most sense, from his perspective— it's how he would have responded. In fact, it is how he responded, in the early days of discovering Ronan's care for him.

So he lets Murphy speak without interruption, watching his face. His towering bulk and strange intensity often give across the impression he knows exactly what he's doing and why, but having encountered this fragility in Murphy, Kylo finds himself reluctant to release him. Maybe, this is why he should wait until he has a plan for letting go before he seizes hold, himself? He gives Murphy's shoulders a squeeze instead.

"I know," he says. And he does. He remembers. "I don't have anything like this where I come from either. It takes time."

Kylo's empathy has Murphy's anger slowly dissipating. The reassurance is convincing enough, enough to smooth away prickled nerves. It's good enough that Murphy doesn't want to lash out. He's removed himself from the defensive, from the offensive. Beneath Kylo's firm grip, his muscles relax; his shoulder slump down.

It grounds him, the squeeze of shoulders, reminds Murphy that he's still in Kylo's room. That they are both having this conversation now.

"It's not fair," Murphy murmurs, attention flicking back to Kylo. He's found the courage to look at him in the eyes now.

"No?" Kylo prompts, hands firm, gaze steady.

What is fair? Very little, in Kylo's admittedly miserable experience. Fairness, as far as he's concerned, is a myth— just as forgiveness is. A shared delusion he refuses to participate in.

But Murphy's presumably thinking of something in particular, and Kylo affords him enough consideration not to simply take the specifics. They can talk about it.

Though, he realises belatedly, he should probably let Murphy's shoulders go now. They should... sit. How do people usually do this kind of thing? It's not like he can use his discussions with Ronan as a template...

i think there's a flaw in my code

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