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WHO: Kylo Ren & Ronan Lynch
WHERE: The Eyrie, Kylo and Ronan's totally not at all a villain lair in Alaska
WHEN: Nowish
WHAT: Time to test Ronan's ability to control his dreams when under attack...
WARNINGS: Mind-control related creepiness, will update if/when necessary

Kylo hadn't truly grasped the purpose of the Darkroom Ronan dreamed for them at first. Utterly dark and devoid of all features or furniture but the bed they'd been lying on when Ronan pulled it into existence around them, it could have been designed to be a prison. But it isn't. Much like Ronan's gloomy bedroom cell at the Meadows, the Darkroom is a hermitage. Unlike Ronan's bedroom, the Darkroom was built to keep things out as well as in.

Ronan is laid out on the bed in the dark, Kylo sat in a chair pulled up to the side— a more recent addition to the decor since they began using this room to train in this way. There's nothing but the two of them here. No distractions.

"Are you ready?" Kylo murmurs, his voice accompanied by the quiet creaking of leather as he shifts to lean in. Every minute sound seems amplified here in the absence of all others. There's a subtle shift of air pressure as he moves, the familiar sense of his presence flowing, pouring over the surface of Ronan's mind.

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A sharp hiss breaks past Kylo's lips. As a creature still so wary of being found in the light, the sudden, instinctive response is to recoil rather than be exposed— and so he does. The half-formed shadow that could have been the shape of Kylo Ren disappears as if he could be burnt off by the sunlight in an instant, leaving the sense of a flinch in his wake. A flash, like the anticipation of pain.

Except that Kylo Ren doesn't fear pain. Discovery, yes. Certainly the nightmarish creature he needs to be in order to invade Ronan's mind fears that.

It doesn't take long for him to recover his focus and adjust his angle of approach. This time, he will make his voice the thin end of a wedge. Just as Snoke— as Palpatine had done to him.

It had begun like this:

"Ronan."

The wind picks up again, without warning, to drown out the sound of his mortal name. The boy Ronan wants to answer that call, to turn his head and go where he's beckoned. Ordinarily, he would never ignore it. But only the forest should be speaking to him here.

Ronan's body slumps forward and falls apart, the winds wearing it down into a pile of blue petals. The air picks them up, scatters them across the forest floor until they become oily black feathers, and the feathers become a raven. The Greywaren's dark wings carry him toward the sky. He darts between branches and breaks through to soar over the trees. All of them wave wildly at him, rejoiced to see him in flight, and he greets them with a sharp, "Ha!"

It's an odd sensation, being pleased and frustrated by Ronan's resistance at the same time. He flows irritably around the perimeter of his dream, dragging himself against the border in search of a weak spot to dig his fingers into, something he can claw open to push inside.

The truth is, Kylo is nothing like Palpatine. He doesn't like tricks, or pretending to be something he knows he is not. He has no patience for subtlety or disguise and a ferocious hatred of lies, which are precisely the tools he will need to convince the dream to accept him.

But he doesn't need the dream to accept him. Does he. It's easy to forget, when Ronan is shaped like this— when he is a world all his own making— but infiltration isn't the only answer. Kylo doesn't need to invade on Ronan's terms at all.

He breathes deeply, gathers his will and stretches out, spilling and spreading until he has Ronan surrounded, trapped under the fluid weight of his determination. He's promised Ronan he would swallow him whole on more than one occasion— and now, as he begins to apply slow, horribly indefatigable pressure, he'll prove it.

Edited 2020-08-13 08:38 (UTC)

Ronan lurches as the air pressure changes, his wings losing the current. For a moment, he flails wildly in mid-air, until his worthless feathers shake away and leave him with bare arms grasping for purchase at nothing. Then gravity drags him down.

The forest is gone. He lands in a sea that wasn't there a moment ago, with a softer splash than someone of his size should deserve. That's as much as he manages to conjure. But it's not long before he's pushed beneath the waves by invisible hands that shouldn't be there, water pouring into his mouth and flooding his lungs. He puts up a good struggle, and as a reward, he sinks deeper and deeper.

Something about the darkness is familiar, though Ronan's drifted a little too far from his conscious mind to immediately place it. Closing in on him from all sides, choking him as it pours down his throat, it overtakes him in seconds. In the end, he's still so malleable.

Kylo's satisfaction is impossibly thick. The rich, lavish darkness swells and breathes, delighting in its possession as it pours in to fill every last hollow space of Ronan's body until he's utterly, completely permeated. Engulfed and invaded. Filled to overflow.

This is no ocean.

Warm and viscous as amber yet to solidify, Kylo's outstretched mind hums with entirely obvious pleasure. There's nothing quite like the sensation of having the object of his desire— his obsession— held captive.

Does Ronan yield? Will he summon the will for one last futile struggle to reclaim mastery of his own subconscious mind, or choose to surrender it? There's a reward in store for him either way, if the wordless murmur dragging a promise down the length of his spine is to be believed...

Ronan fights, the same way he's fought nightwash and his own unmaking, though the experience couldn't be more different. When he's unmade, it's a great terrible nothing that eats him from the inside out, spilling out into more nothingness until there's no Ronan and the only thing he embodies is absence.

The will that's swallowing him up now is the very opposite. There's so much of it that it feels like he couldn't vanish if he tried, that instead he'll be preserved forever in this state. The same hands that pushed him under now tighten around his wrists and ankles, until it becomes too difficult to swim and he's left twitching, until he finally goes still.

Instead of drowning him, the darkness replaces oxygen. He breathes it in, or rather, it breathes for him - because he can't reject it, can't choose to hold his breath. His lungs expand and contract under its will. His heart beats with it, pumping it through his veins. He can't remember why he was fighting it in the first place. As soon as he gives himself over to the dark, the aching stops.

Good.

Seated at Ronan's bedside in the dark, Kylo's lips part in silent sympathy with the sentiment, though the word doesn't fall from his mouth. It flows through his thoughts instead as a rolling swell of favour.

The darkness that has Ronan held hostage is dangerously vast, a rippling entity that spreads out in all directions— but now it's found its way inside, all of it draws solid and concentrates here, wanting nothing more than to be closer than close. It wants all of Ronan, all to itself. It never wants to be apart from him, ever again. Even for a moment. It wants to be the grip of warm, strong hands. The pulse of a heart shuddering in violent, counterpoint rhythm. Lips pressing devotion to the back of his neck. Fingers tangling into knots.

Mine, it breathes. Mine.

In the endless hunger of its looping coils, Ronan risks becoming a feast.

Entirely counter to the point of their exercise, Ronan gives himself over to it. He allows the darkness to permeate and settle into him, to seep into all his empty spaces and fill in all the cracks.

He makes himself a vessel for it.

Now it belongs to him, too. This thing that would consume him. What began as an invasion has now become a trap, and he would no sooner release it than it would release him.

Mine, he answers voicelessly, as he finally recognizes the entity that's devouring him. He can feel the shape of it, now, running his hands over broad shoulders and weaving fingers into thick curls.

It remains impossible to reject Kylo, but capturing him? That's a different story. Capturing him is easy, because Ronan wants nothing more. He would have Kylo forever, only for himself, and exist only for Kylo in return. Because this is a dream, and Ronan is a god here, the whole world bends to grant him this impossible wish. If he wakes up now, will Kylo belong to him forever?

If the darkness condensing itself into the form of Ronan's lover recognises the nature of the trap, it makes no effort to escape. The shape Ronan traces with his hands is the only one it wants to adopt— and so it does, steadily developing features as Ronan remembers them. Kylo, Ronan's chosen one, here in his dream where anything is possible.

"I am yours," he says— and not simply because Ronan wants him to. He's here, senses stretched through Ronan's thoughts to inhabit this vessel Ronan builds for him.

He doesn't have to shrink or deform at all to fit inside the fantasy of a Kylo Ren who would grant Ronan's wish: it's his own.

"Here," he murmurs, twisting in his arms. "And when you wake."

"Always?" Ronan wonders out loud.

Of course, the dream would lie to him if the truth were anything other than what he's hoping to hear. Everything here bends to meet his desire. The darkness beyond Kylo takes the shape of the room where his body lies, watched over by the real Kylo, who's also watching him here. One reality overlaying the other, so close in manifestation but slightly divergent in detail.

In one world, Ronan has a question he doesn't know how to ask. In the other, he can already feel the shape of a smooth metal band hidden against his palm. This is a secret he dreams again and again, only he never takes it with him, because on the other side of the mirror is a Kylo who might say no.

A strange anticipation builds in the darkness both sides of the wandering boundary between conscious and unconscious as Ronan's dream slips from a tangle of sensation into this parallel of reality. Layered and lensed in infinite magnification, the immense weight and power of Kylo's will focuses exactly there, on the question Ronan lets loose in this liminal space. Someone's heart is pounding. He doesn't know whose.

He's quiet, for a moment— because dreams are for impossible things. Because they came here to practice, and perhaps that's still what Ronan's doing. Testing. Trying on the fantasy for size.

And then he leans forward— both of him, possibly, though it's difficult for him to know the difference. He reaches out to touch Ronan's face, cradling his cheek in the palm of his hand. How far removed he is, now, from the jealous ache he'd been consumed by every time he'd caught sight of the affection Ronan had for his creations. From the fear that had led him to take only as much as he was sure Ronan could tolerate losing in one sitting, rationing his exposure to the intimacy and connection he'd found with him though he already knew himself hopelessly addicted to it.
From believing himself disqualified from everything Ronan offered and incapable of giving him anything but pain in return.

Could he ever have come this far if he hadn't been given the chance to explore his impossible desire in a dream, first?

"Always," he confirms. "That's what I want to be."

In the dream, Ronan leans in to Kylo's touch. He's had this one before. He's not sure how many times. Never with the real Kylo there to witness it, of course, and if he could, he'd draw a curtain over the scene and block it from Kylo's view right now.

Recently it occurred to Ronan that his father never asked this question, either. His mother did not exist before she was Niall Lynch's wife. She had no other desires, no dreams of her own. She would never imagine a life different from the one her husband gave her. That must have been a lot easier than falling in love with a human. Ronan, like an idiot, keeps doing it over and over, and losing every single one.

He sinks to one knee, holding Kylo's gaze. "Don't answer me here," Ronan tells him, warning away the dream, which would give him everything and nothing at all. He draws Kylo's hand from his cheek and holds it instead, lips brushing over his knuckles. "I want you to choose me. I want the life we have together to be the rest of my life. I want everyone to know that I'm yours and you're mine."

The ring, behaving in the typical way of dreams, is already on Kylo's finger when Ronan clasps his hand and kisses it again. This time, it's coming back with him.

As the boundary between one reality and the other dissolves around them, Ronan whispers the question into Kylo's mind:

"Will you marry me?"

Dreams are elastic, timeless things— though it's possible this one is different, punctured as it is by Kylo's power, tethered to the outside world by the reach of his will. There's no reason Kylo should find himself stunned as Ronan moves, the dream shifting around them both until Ronan is looking up at him with clear, ice blue eyes, dropped to one knee. There should be all the time in the world for his reeling senses to recover, space to breathe and listen to the sound of his racing heart.

But there's only the words. The absolute unflinching truth of them, steady as Ronan's gaze. The devotion of Ronan's lips, the certainty of his hold where he takes his hand— the intensity of the dream fills Kylo's mind beyond capacity, quietening everything but the message of Ronan's intent.

And then there is no dream. Everything falls into the still, pitch-black silence of the Darkroom, where Kylo is leaning over Ronan's emptied body. Emptied, because that's the price Ronan pays whenever he tears off a piece of himself so he can carry it back with him when he wakes: delayed re-integration. That's the cost of the ring he's dreamt onto Kylo's finger.

There's a ring on Kylo's finger.

He exhales, slow, strangely ragged at the edges, then staggers to his feet. Light blazes in from the threshold as he opens the door, then vanishes as it closes behind him.

Kylo's gone by the time Ronan returns to his body.

It's no surprise. Really, this is exactly why Ronan kept his wish safely buried deep inside his subconscious and only took it out to look at it when he was sure he was alone. If Kylo had wanted this, Ronan would have found it in Kylo's mind instead of his own.

Such a small dream doesn't keep him paralyzed for long, but it's a torturous minute or so, Ronan in a lifeless sprawl while he waits for the strength to return to his limbs. He stares up at the darkness until the numbness retreats and his fingers hook into the bedding, clawing until he's upright. He swings his heavy legs off the edge of the bed and drags himself to his feet.

He can apologize. It's probably not too late to apologize. That's assuming Kylo hasn't taken the plane, but it hasn't been that long. If Ronan moves fast, he might catch him.

If the Darkroom were simply a room, the enormity of his mistake would have slammed into Kylo's senses the second enough of Ronan's consciousness returned to his body to feel his misery.

But the Darkroom was designed as a soundproof chamber for thoughts, made to allow for perfect concentration without distraction. Perfect containment. Kylo only realises what he's done as the door slides open to illuminate the interior, light streaming in from the hallway at his back. His shadow falls across Ronan's face.

Thank God.

Ronan's unsteady legs nearly give out from under him, but he catches himself on Kylo's arm before retreating, on second thought, to lean against the doorframe instead.

"We don't have to," he gasps out, breathless. "Don't go. Just tell me you don't want it. I'm sorry for doing that to you. You don't have to promise me anything."

Kylo doesn't believe in apologies. He's never been able to imagine one that could soothe his hurt or right the wrongs done to him— how could anything do that? Nothing rewinds the past. No-one can take back what they've done.

He can't.

"Ronan," he interrupts, alarmed, putting out an arm to reach for him, strong hand seizing his shoulder. Ronan's ring is still on his finger, right where he dreamt it could be. "Always. I meant it. Every word."

This wasn't the plan. Ronan has to know that, doesn't he? He has to. "I wanted to show you."

It isn't the gesture Kylo had hoped for now, maybe, but he presents it all the same. Clutched horribly tight as evidence between his thumb and forefinger is a ring, formed of silver from a mask he no longer needs.

It's awfully confusing, for a second or two, because it's not as easy to believe. Rejection makes sense. Ronan, who is wrong in every way, would of course be wrong for marriage. He'd spent months trying to figure out how to make himself suitable, in one tradition or another, and the best they could settle on was reinvention. He could be something nameless to Kylo, they'd decided. That was supposed to be enough. Kylo had every right to be angry with him for changing the rules.

But Kylo's offering him a ring, now. Where did it come from? How long has he had it? It's not a dream. Kylo forged it, Ronan slowly realizes, and then he held onto it. Was he waiting?

The initial panic settles into a flustered heat, Ronan's face going red. "Shit," he hisses softly, reaching out to touch the ring but not sure whether he should take it. "Oh, shit."

What should he say? He doesn't know— and watching Ronan's face isn't helping him find the answer. How does he explain?

"It's ours," he attempts, hoping the words he built into their very first dream can carry everything else. "Or I don't want it."

That's all it is, the ring. It's the proof he'd wanted to offer Ronan as answer to his question— but not just the one he'd asked. Yes. He will marry him. No, he won't be marrying him just to indulge him in his desire. He wants this too. He'd only wanted to be certain it was Ronan's choice. His decision, rather than simply his dream.
And he'd wanted to give Ronan that certainty, too.

"I wanted you to know. To always know."

It seems so obvious, once Kylo says it, that Ronan feels twinge of guilt for leaping to the worst conclusion. That had been his own inadequacy at play, though. He hadn't believed Kylo meant to be cruel. Most people wouldn't know what to say if their favorite painting or piece of furniture suddenly proposed marriage. Pygmalion's situation is rare enough that there's a diagnostic name for the complex.

Ronan eases closer, steadier now that there's no need to chase. He closes his hand around the ring and the fingers presenting it to him, like a blind man capturing the whole picture of it.

"Well, now I fucking know."

Kylo's expression shifts as Ronan's panic eases into confusion and then understanding, the tension of his own alarm melting away in reflection. His death grip loosens, a flicker of a smile tugging at his mouth. Relief, where his senses are still electric with Ronan's decision to ask for what he wants.

"Yes."

Yes, Ronan knows now. Yes, Kylo will marry him. There aren't many things capable of making Kylo giddy, but all of them are right here.

"Will you?" he asks, unsure in the moment if he should be taking a knee to accept a proposal or offering one of his own. He hadn't really considered the possibility that Ronan might ask him first. He hadn't prepared for any of this at all. The only thing he knows with absolute certainty is that this is what he wants— that this is the opposite of amputation they've both been looking for.

"Marry me, Ronan."

Ronan watches Kylo's lips form those words, memorizing them so that he can conjure them later and hear it again and again. It's not the first time Kylo has asked to marry him. It's only the first time he's done it here, of his own volition. It's the first time those words have been spoken outside of a dream. Nothing about it is like Ronan imagined, which makes it perfect, because it's true.

"Of course I will."

He hasn't worked out what that will look like, either. It won't be the sort of wedding he was taught to expect. No priest, no sacred vows, no promise of a child. For the longest time, Ronan believed his marriage wouldn't be real until God recognized it. But God has never recognized him. And the promise Ronan wants to make isn't to God, but to the man he loves. The man he will love forever.

His hand lifts away, fingers splaying so that Kylo can slip the ring on.

Kylo wastes no time. Not because he thinks Ronan might change his mind, but because he's already been waiting too long for this. Ronan's spent too long believing himself lesser than he is, expecting to be forgotten and abandoned— and but now, he chooses to believe Kylo's promise instead. This will be his reminder. Smoothly, the silvery band slides onto Ronan's finger— of course it does, Kylo's spent hours committing every part of him to memory— and Kylo lets go of the breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

There they are. Each encircling the other, an open declaration.

"What changed your mind?" Kylo asks, his focus tracking up from the sight of his ring on Ronan's hand to the blue of his eyes.

Ronan stares at the ring like he can't quite believe that it's there, as if it might vanish if he so much as blinks. When it doesn't, he finally pulls his gaze away from it, raising his eyes to meet Kylo's.

"My mind was already made."

It's sort of a surprise that Kylo didn't see right through him. But it can be hard to tell, he knows, when you want something bad enough. Projection can look an awful lot like proof. And vice versa.

"I tried to think of all the ways I could make it happen, but I couldn't figure out if you wanted it. I thought maybe you didn't want to change anything. I didn't want you to think it wasn't enough, the way things were."

Kylo reaches for him then, no longer content to have Ronan anywhere but caught up in his arms. He'd never meant to leave Ronan in any doubt, and he'd never intended to leave any room for Ronan's imagination to paint him disinterested— but he had.

"Come here," he murmurs, more demand than request. He draws Ronan close to himself, breathing him in.

It isn't Ronan's fault Kylo doesn't always know how to believe he could be chosen. It isn't his fault neither of them do.

"What we have..." He pauses. Tries again. "I want you to want more of me, Ronan."

Ronan sinks into the embrace with no resistance, his arms slipping around Kylo to hold him just as tight. He tucks his face into the crook of Kylo's neck and takes in those words, not trusting himself to do anything more than listen. An unexpected heat burns behind his eyes and he isn't sure why, because everything about this is exactly what he hoped for. He feels like the happiness is about to shatter him, the way he felt that night when Kylo first named the connection between them love.

So much of what Ronan could want is his for the taking. But this? The love that someone might feel for him? The desire to stay with him, to give to him? That's not something that Ronan can create. Historically, it isn't even something he can inspire in people. They take from him and then they leave. Every morning, he wakes to find Kylo still beside him, and every morning, it's a complete surprise. When something like that feels like a gift, it seems greedy to ask for more.

"Not just more," Ronan murmurs, his lips grazing Kylo's jaw. "I want it all."

It's Kylo who takes a shuddering breath now, pressing close and holding Ronan so tightly it can hardly be comfortable. Who would ever want all of him? The best he'd ever managed to imagine before Ronan was someone who could look at him and see enough of what they wanted that they'd be able to tolerate the rest— someone who could see how he might be cultivated into something better. It's all he'd ever known. The only way he'd ever known how to see himself.

"It's yours," Kylo promises. His eyes close, his head tipping to rest on Ronan's shoulder to offer him as much of his cheek, the corner of his mouth and the line of his jaw as he can reach. He needs, he decides, to do better. Ronan isn't asking him to surrender only the parts of him he believes he will like. "All of me."

Kylo would not be the man Ronan loves without the very worst of him. It wasn't his potential that Ronan fell in love with. He never looked at Kylo as an object to be refined, a person to be reformed, a project to be undertaken. He isn't trying to uncover Ben Solo, heir to the Skywalker legacy, the fallen hero in need of redemption. He loves Kylo Ren, who built an identity out of the ashes of his family's expectations, who found a will of his own despite the influences fighting to pull him in one direction or another.

Ronan will have this one. This war criminal. This monster.

He lays a trail of kisses across Kylo's cheek, which is difficult to do when he keeps breaking into a smile. Leaning his weight into that crush of an embrace, Ronan practically climbs him, until he can't get any closer without altogether sinking into Kylo. Awed, like he's trying to convince himself of this reality, he whispers, "I'm gonna marry you. We're getting married."

Kylo laughs. He can't quite help it— it overtakes him, building and building as he feels Ronan press closer and closer, until it bursts free.

"We're getting married," he agrees, pressing his smile into the warmth of Ronan's neck.

But it isn't enough. Suddenly, he's sweeping Ronan up into his arms, bundled up and held close to his chest. It's effortless, of course, but that's not why his heart is racing.

"I'm going to marry you," he confirms. "I'm going to be your husband. That's what you'll say, when they ask you who I am."

Ronan barks out a laugh, too, as Kylo sweeps him up like he weighs nothing - something Kylo alone has ever been capable of doing, giant that he is. It makes Ronan feel light as air, though his heart's soaring for an entirely different reason.

"Husband," he sighs, testing the shape of the word as he loops his arms around Kylo's neck. "My husband, Kylo. My fiancé, for now. I get to call you that already, the next time someone asks. Do you like it?"

Ronan is so beautiful to watch in moments like this it makes him ache. And yet this bright, soaring joy they've sparked within eachother against all odds, despite all the reasons it should never have been allowed to happen— it belongs to both of them. He feels strangely radiant himself, here in the safety of their sanctuary. "Your fiancé," he echoes, feeling the impossible delight of it surge through his words and out, where Ronan hears and reflects it back. "Mm. I do. Ronan Lynch. My fiancé. My promised, my betrothed."

He smiles, leaning in to kiss him softly.

"My husband-to-be."

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