Chapter Text
pe·num·bra (noun) : the shadow cast by the earth or moon over an area experiencing a partial eclipse; the less dark outer part of a sunspot, surrounding the dark core.
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There was a young woman strapped to the table.
Kylo Ren sat, his fingers steepled, his breathing even and deliberately controlled. She had yet to stir, yet to blink back to consciousness under the harsh station lights, yet to strain those slender wrists against the cold cuffs, but he didn't mind, he told himself. He could be patient, if he ignored the sifting anger underneath him. She would wake.
And wake she did. She was confused briefly, as those pale eyelashes snapped open and took in the unfamiliar scene - but she remembered and recovered quickly, meeting his gaze (or where she presumed his gaze was, given his mask) with a solid sort of look. That was good, Kylo Ren thought, his patience running out like quicksand in an hourglass. It was far past time that they began.
“Where am I?” She demanded, as if she were in a place to make such demands. “Who are you?”
“I,” he said, standing, (the heavy swish of a cloak at his back and the gravel of his helmeted voice gave him a quiet thrill), “Am Kylo Ren.” She did not respond, instead choosing to glare at him.
“I know you know of the map,” he continued, stepping closer. His boots were heavy on the grated floor. “And I know that you have seen it. You will show it to me.”
When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. “Did you kill my friends?”
He raised an eyebrow under his mask, amused. “I do not care for them. I am sure it will reassure you to know that I know nothing of their whereabouts.” She seemed to relax a bit at this. He plowed forward. “Though I'm not sure that they care much for you, either, considering how lax your training with that blaster was.”
She flushed. “It doesn't help that I was being stalked by a monster in a mask,” she spat.
Kylo Ren could hear the hidden challenge in the undertone of her voice, and, contemplating for a moment, slowly reached up and released the catch on his mask. It loosened with a dull mechanical hiss and slowly, dramatically, he pulled the headpiece off and placed it to the side. She seemed to relax as she took in the looks of someone apparently not much older than herself, the dark hair, the guarded face. It couldn't hurt to inspire some trust in him, he decided. There was something about her that itched under his skin, whispered in his thoughts, and knowing his face would let her lower her guard.
Then he could strike, and inspire some fear, too.
He leaned in slightly towards her. Her eyes were wide, defiant. “You will show me, willingly,” he coaxed. “You know that I could take it from you, if I wished.” And with that, he reached out with his crowbar of a mind and slowly, gratingly, began to peel into hers.
Her name was Rey, he found, and her thoughts tasted of grit and rust and heat, of long foodless nights and the relentless drumbeat of the desert sun, and oh, did her loneliness taste of cool sharp spring water amongst all this sand.
“You were alone, weren't you?” He murmured, deaf to her gritted teeth and voiceless whines. “So alone, waiting for family that you barely remember, that didn't care for you, to come back for you. You -” He broke off abruptly. As he pried through her mind thoughtlessly and without a care, something was sifting through his own, untrained but certainly not without skill. He met her belligerent gaze, eyes boring in, not daring to believe -
And suddenly he was no longer Kylo Ren. Ben Solo-Skywalker was 12 and anxious, anxious of the roiling power he could feel in his fingertips, anxious for his uncle’s approval (or, some sneaking part said, disapproval), anxious that his mother didn't love him - and then he was 16, he was to be initiated into the Knights of Ren, relinquishing his old name and identity, casting them off as he had cast off his sniveling classmates - the Dark of the Force weighed heavily on his shoulders, gloating at its victory, but under the heady power and the anger was something else, something he didn't quite remember feeling at the time, something intimately familiar, something -
Rey’s voice pulled him abruptly out of his reverie and out of her head. “You're afraid,” she said, her voice equal parts incredulous and vicious. “You're afraid that you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader.”
Kylo Ren turned tail and fled. He was 20, now, and assured in his position and power.
But he was still afraid.
---
His father stood before him, a hand resting on the proffered light saber. The structure was eerily silent, watching the stretched-taunt reconciliation between estranged father and estranged son. Kylo Ren found that he was tense and anxious and scared, and that he wasn't sure he knew how much of that was genuine and how much was an act.
The sun went out, then, consumed and subsumed, and Kylo Ren felt something within himself flicker out in response. Briefly, a small thing in his head lamented at the timing, if the sun had only lasted another few moments. . .! This voice was mercilessly squashed and Kylo Ren activated his saber.
Somewhere in the background he could hear screams. That didn't matter. All that mattered, in this moment between the father and the son that no longer existed, was his victory. Kylo Ren let the moment extend, basking in it, but unsurprisingly, the man who was once his father ruined it. A single calloused hand was on his face, resting on his cheek. It was warm and comforting.
Kylo Ren released his sabers hold on the body and let it fall, unceremoniously, into the abyss. His face was impassive, but inside he was rejoicing. He'd completed his mission, or at least his own personal one. Han Solo was dead. Now that the moment had passed, he could hear Solo’s pet screaming something in its dumb animal tongue, and the startled cries of one who had yet to see life’s true harshness. There was a sharp pain in his side - he'd been shot, he vaguely noted, blood dripping through the fingers now clenched to his side, though nothing life threatening. He looked up.
On the balcony were two figures. Rey was there, mouth gaping, and her companion was shouting something. As he met her eyes, the thing he thought finally dead inside him, the thoughts he'd hoped would follow his father to the grave, took another rattling breath.
Then explosions rocked the building and the two were gone.
This could not be allowed to happen. The thing inside him, now revived, somehow, now whispering its doubts, must be destroyed. He knew this with a conviction that had no cause, no root besides his own fury.
And if she were the cause of it, then she must be eliminated.
---
He didn't know how he'd made it to the forest. He didn't care. His light saber sizzled in the drifting snow, crimson amongst the pure white, casting a war-torn stain on everything it saw. The two stood before him, transfixed either by the weapon or the steady drip-drip-drip of blood staining the snow beneath him.
“This ends,” he said, hefting up the saber and twirling it behind him in a move that took hours to perfect, “Now.”
The two charged him. Almost lazily, he lifted a hand and chained the boiling sea of the Force within him and pressed, throwing Rey back and up and into a tree. He frowned. He'd missed the protruding stake-like branch that he'd been aiming for. Shame.
Her companion howled and turned back, stumbling to her side. She didn't stir. Kylo Ren sighed. Boring. He stalked forward, saber twirling again; this would be a good day. He had dispatched Han Solo, and now he would dispatch these two irritating gnats, and his own doubts, once and for all.
The companion stood and turned to face him as he approached. There was an object in his hands and Kylo Ren felt himself freeze.
“That belongs to me,” he intoned quietly, trying to force his voice to remain dark and steady instead of shaking.
“Yeah?” The companion snarled. A blue beam of light sparked into being next to his face, illuminating his dark complexion with an unearthly glow. “So take it from me.”
The blue and red clashed, sizzling, and as Kylo Ren overcame his shock he began to see the errors in the man's form. He swept the blue saber out of his hands (this move had taken weeks, he remembered) and it landed in the snow behind him with a satisfying plunk. He cut the man down and he fell like a rock. As he contemplated his victory, he withdrew his own saber, scattering silence into the artificial night, and extended his sword hand towards the fallen weapon. It budged, but only slightly, and he frowned. This was taking too long, far too long. He pressed his power thinly, precisely, towards the saber; why would it not come?
At long last it shot out of the snow towards him. He almost didn't realize that something was wrong until it skipped past his hand, up his arm, missing his face by a bare millimeter as he stumbled backwards to avoid it.
The light saber, the weapon of choice of his old uncle and master, shot past him and into the waiting palm of Rey. She looked pale, despite her tanned complexion, but determined. Kylo Ren met her eyes. She met his, sparking with cold fury. He felt it again - the itch under his skin, the thing in his head, the cool certainty that he was wrong. Then the blue was back and their duel began and he could spare no more thoughts.
She was skilled, he found, despite her lack of training. Something told him that it was her anger that caused this, that her fall to the Dark was a possibility with the fury and loneliness he knew lived in her thoughts. He sweated and struggled, could feel his gun wound dripping more and more, creating a bloody trail as they fought - he told himself haughtily that his wound would put the two of them on equal footing but knew, guiltily, that this wasn't true.
Trees were felled with such frivolous abandon that when the planet first started disintegrating, he thought it more crashes of branches, at first, until the first chasm appeared at Rey’s back. He took the chance and pressed up against her.
They were nearly eye to eye, separated only by the sizzling heat of the light beams, red on blue. There was fear flickering in her face. He could pressure her into the crevice easily now, he knew, but something stilled his hand. This close to her, he could feel the itch again, harsh against his skin and his mind, and he knew that he couldn't kill her, not now. A desperate thought struck him, almost unbidden.
“Join me,” he said. An incredulous look flashed across her face, eclipsing the fear. “Join me,” he persisted. “You have power, and potential. All you need is a teacher. I could help you learn to use the Force the way it was meant to be used.” This, somehow, satiated both the itch and the voice, and both stilled as they waited for an answer.
She just looked awed now. “The Force,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes. Kylo Ren waited. He didn't know why but by god, he waited.
He knew she was lost to him when her eyes snapped open. The icy fury was still there, but so was a stillness, a stillness he hadn't seen in years, not since -
Not since his uncle.
He knew what would happen, then, and avoided the slash that came as she ducked behind him, their positions now reversed. The duel resumed and Kylo Ren knew something had changed. You're wounded, he rationalized desperately. You're weak right now.
But he wasn't. He'd trained too much for that. She was stronger.
A cut burned across his face, cauterized as it went, slicing across his cheekbone down to his chin. He stumbled back as she kicked him in the chest, mildly shocked that she'd landed a blow, and only barely raised his saber in time to stop the downward slash coming. She began to press his sword hand down into the snow and he knew he couldn't hold her back any more. It was over.
And so he laid in the cushion of the snow and waited for the death blow. Both parts of him now were yowling - one in rage, one in pity. He despised them both and waited for oblivion. But it didn't come. The earth cracked and spluttered and split and suddenly there was a vast space between him and Rey. She looked at him from across the gap and felt her anger and regret and fear as one entity, felt that itch under his skin, that whisper in his thoughts, that he knew now had to be the Light.
And then she turned and was gone into the whirling snow - off to find her injured friend, no doubt. He waited once more. His tracking unit would let them find him, and they wouldn't leave him behind to die, not while he was still useful to them. (He was still useful to them. He knew Han Solo was right about that much, and that he may not be useful forever.)
Thoughts rose unbidden and unopposed to his mind and he found himself as Ben again, thinking, as he drip-drip-dripped onto the stark snow, that he should have relinquished his saber.