For trope_bingo
Aug. 14th, 2020 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofleithianTitle: More Than She Came For
Summary: A rewrite of the third Force Bond scene.
Prompt: In Another Man’s Shoes
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
“You had a father who loved you,” Rey said. “Who gave a damn about you.”
“I didn’t hate him.” He never could. Not really.
“Then why?” Rey said.
Kylo went quiet for a while. Did Rey even need to know, he wondered. After all, he didn’t just tell his life story to just about anyone. That wasn’t how it worked. There were so many things that he’d kept under wraps, even as people like Hux and now, Rey, were poking and prodding at him.
“Why do you care about Han Solo?” he said. “You only knew him for, what, a week?”
"It doesn’t matter.” Rey said. “He was like a father to me, the father I never had — you got that right at least. You had everything, Ren, and you just...what did Snoke offer you that your own family couldn’t? Are you just the sort who does that?”
Silence.
“Not by choice.”
“Liar.”
"Have I lied to you so far?”
It was clear that the scavenger was racking her brain for a memory, for proof that Kylo had lied to her. That, at least, was some sort of victory. "No,” she finally said. “But you always have a choice. Hurting someone is always a choice.”
(The interrogation room. Poe. Snoke’s voice, in the back of his head, telling him that he had to)
Kylo swallowed. He wondered if the girl could sense how she’d started to cut. How she had sliced past his defenses, seen how vulnerable he really was. How pathetic and fundamentally unimportant. The girl was loved in the Resistance, as was the traitor, as was Poe...and Kylo Ren had reduced himself to nothing.
“Not all of it,” Kylo said. “I’ll tell you about a boy, scavenger. A very stupid boy, who wanted nothing more than to please his family. The boy’s mother was a Senator, and it was not her job that made her a poor mother, but her...I suppose apathy is the best way to put it when it comes to her son.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Did you really know Leia Organa, or just the legends?”
The girl hesitated. At least she wasn’t firing off insults at him at the moment. Monster, creature...she needed more variety in her insults, Kylo couldn’t help but think. He’d have to teach her that too.
"The boy’s mother was apathetic. Although I doubt even apathetic really sums up how she failed to protect him. There was a presence in the boy’s head, a living shadow ever watching, and what did the same woman who strangled Jabba the Hutt do? Nothing. She knew it was there, and she let it happen. The most she did was send him away, where he wouldn’t be an inconvenience. She wanted a trophy son. Nothing more. Other beings automatically assume that mothers are more nurturing. It seemed they missed the woman who could simply watch as her son was mentally raped again and again, and not have a flash of a gentler instinct. Like it would have been a waste to use it on him.”
“That doesn’t justify killing your father. Or anything else.”
“I’m not done, scavenger. And besides, wouldn’t you get angry, just a little, knowing that your parents were indifferent towards you?”
That seemed to catch her off-balance.
Kylo continued. “The boy’s father tried to love him. There was that. Even in the rockiness of the boy’s childhood, he had a friend. Another male child, who was his best friend. A child who wanted to be a pilot, like his late mother — the mother who actually gave a damn about him.”
He almost hated Poe, just for having the mother that Ben Solo should have had. A mother who cherished him. A mother who wasn’t unthinkingly loving, but wasn’t cold either.
“The two children,” Kylo said, “Loved each other, as one would love a champion. In their eyes, the other was invincible because they loved and believed in each other. And then the mother split them up. Sent her son off to the Academy, and didn’t bother to visit him. For all intents and purposes, he was nothing.”
He skipped the part where Poe became a spice runner at sixteen. Rey didn’t need to hear that. He told her more, of course, told her about the Voice who turned out to be Snoke. He told her about Skywalker, how he had tried to kill Ben Solo. And for what, actually? Kylo knew that Luke had no problem redeeming Vader.
And yet with Ben Solo...with Ben, Luke just didn’t care.
Kylo told her more. Watched as the expressions on her face seemed to be at war with themselves. He remembered, for a moment, Tai — how Tai had believed in him and wanted to save him. How Tai had died for that. Ren, Hennix, Voe...they were gone too. Like Poe, they were part of the gaping void in his heart that seemed to never stop.
“Does that answer your question, scavenger?” he said.
She was quiet for a while. Then, “More than that.”
He swore that he could still see her face, trying to process everything, even as the Bond broke off.
Summary: A rewrite of the third Force Bond scene.
Prompt: In Another Man’s Shoes
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
“You had a father who loved you,” Rey said. “Who gave a damn about you.”
“I didn’t hate him.” He never could. Not really.
“Then why?” Rey said.
Kylo went quiet for a while. Did Rey even need to know, he wondered. After all, he didn’t just tell his life story to just about anyone. That wasn’t how it worked. There were so many things that he’d kept under wraps, even as people like Hux and now, Rey, were poking and prodding at him.
“Why do you care about Han Solo?” he said. “You only knew him for, what, a week?”
"It doesn’t matter.” Rey said. “He was like a father to me, the father I never had — you got that right at least. You had everything, Ren, and you just...what did Snoke offer you that your own family couldn’t? Are you just the sort who does that?”
Silence.
“Not by choice.”
“Liar.”
"Have I lied to you so far?”
It was clear that the scavenger was racking her brain for a memory, for proof that Kylo had lied to her. That, at least, was some sort of victory. "No,” she finally said. “But you always have a choice. Hurting someone is always a choice.”
(The interrogation room. Poe. Snoke’s voice, in the back of his head, telling him that he had to)
Kylo swallowed. He wondered if the girl could sense how she’d started to cut. How she had sliced past his defenses, seen how vulnerable he really was. How pathetic and fundamentally unimportant. The girl was loved in the Resistance, as was the traitor, as was Poe...and Kylo Ren had reduced himself to nothing.
“Not all of it,” Kylo said. “I’ll tell you about a boy, scavenger. A very stupid boy, who wanted nothing more than to please his family. The boy’s mother was a Senator, and it was not her job that made her a poor mother, but her...I suppose apathy is the best way to put it when it comes to her son.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Did you really know Leia Organa, or just the legends?”
The girl hesitated. At least she wasn’t firing off insults at him at the moment. Monster, creature...she needed more variety in her insults, Kylo couldn’t help but think. He’d have to teach her that too.
"The boy’s mother was apathetic. Although I doubt even apathetic really sums up how she failed to protect him. There was a presence in the boy’s head, a living shadow ever watching, and what did the same woman who strangled Jabba the Hutt do? Nothing. She knew it was there, and she let it happen. The most she did was send him away, where he wouldn’t be an inconvenience. She wanted a trophy son. Nothing more. Other beings automatically assume that mothers are more nurturing. It seemed they missed the woman who could simply watch as her son was mentally raped again and again, and not have a flash of a gentler instinct. Like it would have been a waste to use it on him.”
“That doesn’t justify killing your father. Or anything else.”
“I’m not done, scavenger. And besides, wouldn’t you get angry, just a little, knowing that your parents were indifferent towards you?”
That seemed to catch her off-balance.
Kylo continued. “The boy’s father tried to love him. There was that. Even in the rockiness of the boy’s childhood, he had a friend. Another male child, who was his best friend. A child who wanted to be a pilot, like his late mother — the mother who actually gave a damn about him.”
He almost hated Poe, just for having the mother that Ben Solo should have had. A mother who cherished him. A mother who wasn’t unthinkingly loving, but wasn’t cold either.
“The two children,” Kylo said, “Loved each other, as one would love a champion. In their eyes, the other was invincible because they loved and believed in each other. And then the mother split them up. Sent her son off to the Academy, and didn’t bother to visit him. For all intents and purposes, he was nothing.”
He skipped the part where Poe became a spice runner at sixteen. Rey didn’t need to hear that. He told her more, of course, told her about the Voice who turned out to be Snoke. He told her about Skywalker, how he had tried to kill Ben Solo. And for what, actually? Kylo knew that Luke had no problem redeeming Vader.
And yet with Ben Solo...with Ben, Luke just didn’t care.
Kylo told her more. Watched as the expressions on her face seemed to be at war with themselves. He remembered, for a moment, Tai — how Tai had believed in him and wanted to save him. How Tai had died for that. Ren, Hennix, Voe...they were gone too. Like Poe, they were part of the gaping void in his heart that seemed to never stop.
“Does that answer your question, scavenger?” he said.
She was quiet for a while. Then, “More than that.”
He swore that he could still see her face, trying to process everything, even as the Bond broke off.
