albinomilksnake | STAR WARS: possible spoiler warning

But can you. [Distorted and broken, muffled by the digital crackle of his own mask like ozone burning in a storm. The way hatred tastes over set teeth and the acrid, inescapable scent of death. This isn't real. Her breath rasping softly against cold air is, the fit of his helmet bearing down over his skin is-- but the rest sits within her mind, where he's seeped in as a poison, more potent than he could ever otherwise be.

Here, no one will rush to help her. No distance will sever the bond between them.

He stalks between trees: the sum of all her fears given life, limned in livid, flickering crimson.]

Edited 2015-12-27 10:36 (UTC)

[No, she can't--

A determined and sharp intake of breath dispells the creeping thought, a stern jerk of her skull forcing it from her mind. If she can focus and breathe, she can't hear him. It's easier to ignore the sweat sticking to her skin like slime thanks to the temperature.]

You're wasting your time. I'm not afraid of you.

[She sets her teeth to the words, and if she says it firmly enough its very nearly correct. She is afraid -- afraid and uncertain, but not of him. He cannot control her, of that she is certain.

Rey begins to force her wrist to move with the intent of activating her lightsaber. It takes a lot of energy, but she will not stand there frozen in fear that she refuses to fully feel.]

[And then, like some childish, triumphant tale, he's gone. Dissipated into the hiss of white snow as it tumbles through the air in sharp wind, stinging her cheeks with vivid clarity-- as real as the island in her dreams, all hewn stone adrift in a deep, sapphire sea. If she wants, she can snap the button at her side; bathe in the comfort of a light that doesn't belong to her.

Hours it's taken, getting this far, and the more he presses, the more she bites back.

Reality slaps him like ice water and the recoil from rejection finds him as he sucks in too much air for the filter of his mask to keep pace, turning his inhale into a beastly, barely human crackle. Starkiller beneath his feet, the hiss of cool air snaking through ventilation shafts, the dull, vapid thoughts of the guard stationed just outside that locked door - he finds his footing within seconds - lunges forward like someone struck, turning momentum back on his enemy, only this time it isn't on her preferred terms: it's his gloved fingers at her jaw, clamped down fiercely enough to bruise, snapping her head back into the restraints to drag her from comfort without control.] Enough!!

[Her limbs lock again as the leather pinches the skin of her face, and the lines of his mask are met with an attempt at a hard stare. But her heart is beating too fast, he is powerful enough that sheer will can't bite down past his anger. She feels something in her chest close, and it washes over her like an icy curtain.

Her wrists pull up instinctively in the restraints -- his advantage is clear, but she has to protect them. The galaxy is counting on her (Why oh why were they counting on her), she cannot give into fear, into loniless, into powerlessness.

Some of it feels foreign, and some of it (most of it, she's sure) belongs to her and it triumphs over her briefly in a show of weakness.]

Let go of me.

Edited 2015-12-28 08:11 (UTC)

Give me what I want. [Brute force wasn't the solution he'd hoped to come to, but then that was always the way of things in his fractured, too-skewed world: no simple paths to clean futures or the comforts denied to him by blood. For all the blows life saw fit to mar him with across the years on a whim he learned how to endure, keeping his neck above the tide not out of hope, but spite.

And that is what she, some untrained, unharnessed, inexperienced speck of dust from the gutters of Jakku could never know.

He looked at her - Solo. He watched her the way he'd never looked at his own son.

If he snapped her neck it'd be within his rights. If he picked her apart from her insides out she'd never be missed and he hisses that broiling insult as his grip cinches tight, boring into her skin as far as dull, gloved fingertips allow, threatening the hairpin crackle of bone. Threatening worse, though not yet. Not just yet.]

Tell me where he is-- show me!!

[It burns -- his jealousy, his envy, his hatred. The last mixes with her own anger and the spite. The spite, the struggle he claims that she would never know. All of it grounds her in the knowledge that he misses him, that Solo had never been a great father but--]

If you kill me, you'll never find him--!

[She pushes back, furious as she tosses her head like an angered horse to try and rid herself of his hand. Breathing continues in struggling bursts, sweat mixing with tears as he tries to force his way into her mind.

But--he knows Solo. Intimately, judging by his surging emotions when he thinks of him. And Like Skywalker--]

Why...--are you running from them?

[She doesn't understand the emotion she feels, but the tear in his heart. The tear is easy to feel.]

[He has to stop. There's sweat pressed against his brow beneath the armor of his mask from strain; he can feel her thoughts bleeding well into his own, and every inch he tries desperately to steal from her, she's taking. Reading without pause the way no one else has ever truly dared beyond Snoke's own far-reaching grasp. If he continues, she'll know everything.

It's the only thing that has Kylo Ren relenting, tugging her face back to scrape it roughly across the corner of some biting, sharp-edged instrument built into the chair she's been strapped to before she's left to find her breath while he paces. Like something wounded, he's bleeding-- mentally, not physically-- trying (and eventually succeeding) to stopper his own free-flowing memories. His thoughts become a list, repeated over and over again: the objective, Snoke's orders, the map, Luke Skywalker. The oldest, instinctive trick to resisting the prying influence of a Jedi knight, but it proves useful even for those connected so thoroughly to the Force.]

I run from nothing.

[He isn't like his father.

After another moment or two, the anger's fallen to a cool boil. Something he can use, rather than fall prey to. Manipulation via the Force might admittedly be (frustratingly) beyond him in this instance, yet there's more within his reach in terms of interrogation: strategies and leverage he knows like the back of his own hand, owing to years spent perfecting the art.] But if you'd prefer I return my attention to your friends instead...

Edited 2015-12-30 04:27 (UTC)

[She doesn't cry out when he presses her face into the chair, but she does flinch past blood and sweat. Its almost a relief to have him pull back finally, but its hard not to feel vindicated when she hears him suck air past the filter of his mask in that labored manner.]

You may as well be. Running.

[There's a definite sink that occurs in her stomach when he tries to use her friends against her, but its easy to fall back on. How many years had she spent on Jakku alone? The idea of friends, while exciting, is too new for her to allow him to use it against her.

If she can help it. Her eyes drift closed, an attempt to clear her mind of the pain and fear she felt creeping.]

I'm a little nobody without any friends, remember?

[Clever, tuning herself out just as he had. If she were able to fully manage it, he might even adjust his tactics accordingly-- but he's seen her hand where she's seen his: he knows she cares too much beneath where years of necessity have hardened her heart.

In that, he supposes, fingers lifting to thumb the latches holding his mask in place, they're alike.

The air hisses as locks disengage over the faceplate's broadest points, and when he draws it back there's the strangely jarring softness of vulnerable flesh. High cheekbones and bright, almond-shaped eyes under curls of unkempt, dark hair. He looks young. Younger than the image painted by his armor or his station, and he watches her impassively for a few beats longer, waiting until she dares to meet his stare.]

You could be more without them.

[The only correction worth sharing in that moment, whether she bothers to heed it or not.]

[Seeing another face is -- unnerving. She almost preferred the mask, easier to imagine some bizarre monster was at the root of all of this...rather than another human being.]

What? With you?

[She tries to show some bravado by scoffing, but after that brief glance, she refuses to look at him. There's something about his eyes that just -- isn't there, like he's trying to look through and past her at something else.

Its uncomfortable.]

I already told you that you're wasting your time. I don't have what you want.

You're lying. [A child could see it, with how quick she is to turn her attention away from him, even ignoring the glimpse he spied in her thoughts before he tore her from that backwater planet to bring her here.] You've nowhere to run, and nothing to gain from prolonging your suffering.

[She can't hope to escape: the halls are littered with stormtroopers - the entire planet a tribute to the First Order's might - even should she stave off his attempts to delve into her mind, she stands no chance of returning to the world she once called home. Perhaps she's yet to come to that realization.

Perhaps she needs his assistance.] They won't come for you, your friends.

Better to abandon that false hope now, and take what I offer instead.

[Her friends.

That's what they were, weren't they? They were her friends, and now they were in trouble because of her. More rationally, not because of her at all -- they'd be in trouble no matter what, but there's a sense of responsibility she suddenly can't--]

Get out of my head.

[She growls it through gritted teeth and stares pointedly at the ceiling to try and maintain mental blocks that she isn't certain how she put up in the first place. There's a mistiness forming at the corners of her eyes that she blinks back stubbornly.

Its hard not to think of Han and Chewie. Of BB-8.

Of Finn.]

Even if I knew what you were asking of me...what makes you think I'd top it off now by giving you what you want?

Because this is the culmination of your actions. The decision you were bound to face the moment you decided to aid them. [FN-2187 had fallen into her lap much the same way the droid had, and each fumbling, sprawling step taken from that point forward was little more than another rolling, eager shockwave, echoing outwards and onwards until she could no longer outrun the inevitable: his offer-- Snoke's offer-- or the certainty of torment dragging on and on until she proved herself no longer necessary.

This time his stare glints with something deeper, earnesty pooling just beneath the surface of his own innate deceptions, and he licks his lips before he adds, openly:] I know what it is, to suffer because of someone else.

[Even as he says it, even as she understands that he's trying to garner sympathy with her -- Rey understands the truth in his words. This isn't the result of some seduction from the Dark Side, she had seen it when their minds had pushed against one another. Whatever had truly happened to him, he had felt...wronged. Cast aside, suffering, alone. A victim of someone else's misguided actions.

All feelings she's familiar with, and nothing she wants to think about ever again. Is that how Finn would feel about her? And the Resistance--]

So you think it is inevitable. I disagree. So it looks like you're still out of luck.

The greatest benefit of captivity is time. [Back and forth, moves and countermeasures: as it was within her head so it is in conversation, and Ren opts-- as always-- not to flinch or shy away from her deflections. His hand moves for her jawline again. Gentler this time, leather catching the blood from her cheek where it's fallen. Were he capable of more, it might even be considered affectionate.]

Of which we now have much, I think you'll find.

STAR WARS: possible spoiler warning

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