annexedlogs | The number one drama causer is at it again. He's not really sorry.

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The number one drama causer is at it again. He's not really sorry.

Who: Vader
What: Self-surgery, healing, dragging people into his mess
When: Early month, prior to the mini-missions
Where: A room in a rent-by-the-day building in the Magitech, Obi-Wan's hut, probably other places as things develop
Content Warnings: self-surgery, blood (lots of blood), to be updated as needed

Given the chip implanted into them was at the base of their skulls, what it did, and the experiences he had with implanted chips - both in his men and in himself - it probably shouldn't surprise anyone he decided to handle it himself.

Not that he hasn't taken done preparations. A field surgery kit, mirrors, some kind of healing gel and bandages, a tarp on the floor under a cheap chair, and furniture moved away. The room was paid for a couple of days. After thinking it over before he started, he sent a text message to Padmé and a message to Obi-Wan.

Then he washed his hands, the back of his head and his neck, and sat in the chair, prepared so the mirrors allowed him to see the back of his head and neck clearly, even when his hands were in the way. And started cutting. Peeling. The scar tissue was thick, tough, and hard to pull apart. But pull it apart he did, because he didn't want to cut nerves or large blood vessels - there wasn't a bacta tank here. It took time, to get down to muscle, to scrap it away from the implants in his spine without harming his implants or causing too much muscle damage (what he thought was too much anyway).

He didn't winch or flinch, only swore when a blade broke. Angerly threw the disposable ones across the room and set a blade into the reusable ones.

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A slight nod answers the question. He hasn't been happy with her since the last time they talked, and hasn't wanted to let her in during that time, but he still believes there's ultimately a reason for whatever this is between them.

"He told me I should talk to you. Try to understand." That had been said about her stubborn connection to the Resistance and hatred of the First Order, before he'd even known about her choice of tethers. Still, he supposes it's advice he should follow, now that she's here. He draws in a bracing breath before asking, "Why Luke?"

Rey's still trying to process the fact that Darth Vader gave Kylo advice that seemed likely to help the two of them reconcile when he hits her with the question. She nearly flinches; she hadn't been expecting to talk about it yet. She's entirely too tired for whatever argument they're about to have, now that the adrenaline that came with panic has started to wear off.

Still, she supposes he deserves an answer. It hadn't been a complicated one on her end.

"I didn't want it to be a stranger, and I thought someone I knew, a Force user -- we already know how to get into other people's heads, and how to stay out. There weren't that many choices who were correctly aligned."

She'd offered to tether to Obi-Wan, for that matter, but she'd respected his privacy enough not to push when it seemed he was trying to gently deflect.

He can understand that answer, at least. Of any she might have given, it's by far the least likely to cause the argument she fears. It won't make him entirely forgive it, but it at least doesn't immediately set him wanting to yell at her about it all over again.

"It's unfortunate you and I weren't correctly aligned." A dangerous admission, perhaps, when it both indicates just how much more comfortable he still is with her than with others here, and leaves open the unasked question of whether she would have picked him over Luke if she could have. But if Rey had been an option, he wouldn't be so stubbornly resisting the idea of tethering at all. He doubts there's anything that extra link could add to their connection that doesn't already exist between them.

The admission surprises her, and she looks over at him with a slightly pensive expression. They'd been angry at each other, but she'd thought the same, briefly, before deciding not to dwell upon things she couldn't change.

"If we had been...?"

She lets the thought trail off with a minute shake of her head. It wasn't worth contemplating. They'd already proven how badly they could hurt one another. Another bond would've just complicated everything even further.

"Who did you end up tethering to, anyway?"

He doesn't quite know how he should interpret that head shake. Whether it means she doesn't want to contemplate that impossible thought, or whether it means the result would have been the same regardless. The latter possibility twists something in his gut.

Fortunately, her further question stops him from dwelling on that too much. He blinks.

"I haven't."

Her expression quickly goes through a range of small shifts from concern to mild exasperation and she huffs an audible sigh.

"Ben."

She hasn't even called him by that name since they've gotten here, not since she learned it belonged to Obi-Wan as well. It seemed better to avoid the confusion entirely and call them by their other names, and it hadn't mattered when they weren't speaking. Now she just continues to radiate concern and frustration in equal measure as she looks him over.

"Are you all right? You're not feeling any imbalance yet?"

She wonders if perhaps she ought to have waited to be certain that what they'd been told was true, but it seemed like a bad idea given that waiting meant her choices would be further limited.

The way she says his name (that name) has his eyebrows raising in surprise, and then mild incredulity.

"I'm fine." Truthful, not defensive. He hasn't felt anything yet. If there's any truth at all to what they'd been told, then it seems clear he still has time to figure it out. And he's still hoping to never need to figure it out, considering the only people here who he'd be willing to tether to are Rey, who can't help with the imbalance issue, and Vader, who could, but seems to have all of Kylo's skepticism and perhaps more.

She flushes slightly, realizing that she's shown her hand regarding how much she still cares for him. Not that she's been trying overly hard to hide it; she's just been angry and frustrated and hasn't wanted to start up an old argument without any clear solution.

He doesn't seem to be lying, though, and at this distance she's attuned to him enough that she could tell if he were more than slightly out of sorts.

"I suppose it could be less of a danger than they made it seem."

If that's the case, maybe she could untether entirely? She likes this version of Luke, but she can't say there's any particular benefit to being tethered to another person, friend or not.

"Can you promise me you won't be stubborn about this if it turns out they're not exaggerating?"

If nothing else she very clearly doesn't want him to slowly die of his own resistance to the idea.

Kylo isn't certain he can promise not to be stubborn about anything. But beyond that, the question throws him a bit, even knowing how she'd reacted a moment ago when he said he hadn't tethered. And how it seems like she'd come here purely because she'd picked up on his distress through the Force.

"You're worried about me." It's an observation, and his tone carries a note of surprise about that revelation. Not so much that she does care about his wellbeing, but that she's unusually willing to make it known right now.

Rey flushes even pinker at the accusation. She couldn't deny that she had been, and that she still cared about him after everything. She's too tired to even try to come up with a good reason that she ought to be.

"When I felt your grandfather come back into the Force, and your own reaction, I thought -- I'd only felt one person with that much Dark in him."

She stares down at her hands, not wanting to relive any of what she'd felt. The way all the blood had drained from her face and she'd flat out ran before she could form anything resembling coherent thought. She didn't even have her lightsaber, so what she'd even been planning to do is anyone's guess.

"I thought. If Snoke could come here. I didn't want you to face him alone."

He bristles a little at the implication of his grandfather being anything like Snoke. Even if he understands why she'd felt that, when all she'd noticed was the sheer darkness in either... there is no comparison, not in Kylo's mind. Vader's aura may be cold, but he's treated his grandson with more warmth than Kylo had ever expected.

But what she says further draws him from that thought. She hadn't wanted him to fight on his own. That's touching, in its own way.

His brows knit as he tries to make sense of it all, and as his memories go back to that moment on the Supremacy, when they had been so intensely unified for a moment before it had all promptly fallen apart. "You left," he eventually says. Not accusation, but confusion. She hadn't left him with Snoke, no. But she'd left him alone, on a burning ship, to deal with the rest of the First Order entirely on his own to deal with the mess left in Snoke's absence.

She'd sorted it out by the time she got there, and now that she's been in his presence a little while she could easily differentiate Vader from Snoke. Snoke had been fathomless evil, incomprehensible to her. There was something more to Vader. Something she could nearly understand.

She blinks at the sudden change of topic, taking a few beats to catch up.

"You know I didn't want to."

She'd come so close to taking his hand. Even knowing he was leaving the Resistance to die, she'd considered it.

She didn't want to, he does know that. But she had, nonetheless, and that somehow makes it sting even more. He's not as angry about it now. He's all too aware of his own faults in the moment, back then, and they've proven well enough that whatever this connection is between them still holds. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt.

"You just wanted to save the Resistance more." There is a bit of accusation in that one, though not as strong as it could be, with the echoes of his grandfather's advice still sitting present in his head - find out why.

She can feel that lingering hurt, and she'd like to be able to take it away. Does it hurt you, too? she'd asked, and still he'd tried to comfort her. But she can't tell him that the accusation isn't true.

"Would you ever have stopped before they were all dead, if I'd stayed?

If he'd stopped the fleet. If he could tell her he wanted all the violence to end. If he hadn't decided to name himself Supreme Leader the very instant the old one was dead. She'd never be able to support him so long as his goal was conquest.

It's hard to say just what would have happened. Kylo had barely been in his right mind at that moment, even before the betrayal that had set him on a mission to personally destroy every last bit of the Resistance if he could. But if she had stayed? If she had given him what he'd been hoping for, rather than doing the exact thing he most feared?

"I wouldn't have chased them." He can say that much. His thought had been to let things go as they were, to let the Resistance die or get away as they managed under the current circumstances. Whoever did escape, he wouldn't have pursued, especially not with her there convincing him not to. It's easy to imagine that if she had stayed, the battle on the surface of Crait might not have happened at all.

It's more than she'd assumed. Could it have been enough?

If she'd stayed, might she have been able to talk him into a truce for some amount of time? Long enough to get him to see a way forward that didn't involve more blood on his hands? Or hers, for that matter?

The look she gives him is infinitely sad. There's not much she can say to a possibility that no longer exists. Even if they could forgive one another, Crait had shifted the balance of things. She couldn't bring the former Supreme Leader of the First Order back to the Resistance the way she could've returned with the General's son who had broken free of Snoke's command.

"If I'd joined you," she begins slowly, a part of her already withdrawing in anticipation of how much this is likely to hurt.

"If I'd taken your hand, what would you have expected of me?"

Any of the ways he could answer is likely to hurt, but finding that she's made the wrong choice might actually break her.

Nor would the First Order be so enthusiastic about accepting the girl he'd claimed killed Snoke in the panic of waking up to Hux yelling at him. Though he knows that would have been a difficult thing to attempt explaining, regardless.

"I told you." For a moment, that's all he can say back to that, too baffled by the question to find words to explain whatever she thinks needs explaining. He hadn't said things in the best way then, but as far as he's concerned still, he did say them. "We had an opportunity to make the galaxy be whatever we want it to be. You and I. I wanted your help."

Your help.

She searches his face for any sign that it meant what she'd heard at the time; that he'd wanted her power. That he'd wanted to make her into weapon the way Snoke had done to him. That she was valuable for what she could do rather than what they could've been together.

You need a teacher, he'd said, and all she saw was someone who wanted to bend her into the only shape he knew, and she looked at herself and knew deep down what she'd be capable of if her darkness were fed.

Her lower lip trembles. She's so tired.

"I was afraid."

The confession startles her a bit even as she speaks it.

"Not of you. Of me. I was afraid of what I might be, of what I'd turn into."

Why would he need her power? He was a weapon, himself, and one tired of serving the whims of someone who had never truly appreciated him for anything other than that. There had been a long time in which Kylo had thought that Snoke had his best interests in mind in some way, but in enough time, he'd proven that thought wrong over and over again.

What he wanted was a new start, free from that. With someone to help guide him as an equal, not as a servant, or a new master. But that had been too much to hope for, it seemed.

Whatever words he might have expected from her, those weren't it. "Why?" he can't help asking, though a part of him understands entirely, through memories of the days when he still strived to live up to the heroic Jedi image everyone expected of him, even as a much darker voice whispered into his head.

There it is; the thing that sent her out here in a panic. The thing that makes her push herself harder and harder in the hopes of dreamless sleep. The thing that Luke Skywalker had seen in her the very first time she touched the Force.

"Luke Skywalker -- the older one -- knew me for approximately five minutes before he told me he was scared of me."

It's not his fault, not really. But it's a way into the things that scare her still.

"There's something wrong. With me. I see it in my dreams, and I--"

She takes a breath, feeling the chill from earlier wash back over her again. She digs her fingers into the wooden step beneath her, needing to hold onto something but afraid that if she reaches for Kylo she'll fall apart entirely again.

"-- I felt it in there, when I touched Vader. There's something. I guess it's the Dark side, I don't know. It's familiar, and it's always been there, waiting. I'm afraid of what I'll do if I let it out.

It's to Kylo's credit that he doesn't have anything to immediately say to that comment about Luke, though the thought of "Of course he did" is probably loud enough in the space between them for her to hear it regardless. His uncle had been scared of anything that so much as brushed the dark. He'd tried to hide it with regard to Kylo when he'd been younger, but he'd seen that quiet fear well before Luke had ever come after him with a lightsaber in his sleep.

The rest of that confession is more surprising. He had known from the first time they fought she had more connection to the dark than she would let herself acknowledge. And by now, he has a better idea of why, though he hasn't found the right moment to tell her what he had learned about her own grandfather, and he's not certain that the answer should be now, when she's already feeling such distress.

Not sure of any words at all, he goes a different route and lays his hand over one of hers where it grips the step between them, hoping that will provide some comfort, at least.

Some of the tension goes out of her when his hand finds hers, and the overwhelming tiredness that always follows in the wake of healing someone starts to take its place. With an exhalation of sheer relief at having told someone -- someone who didn't want to use the information to hurt her -- she leans into him, resting her head on his shoulder and letting her eyes fall closed while she tries to gather up the pieces she feels shattered into.

It's long enough before she speaks that she might've fallen asleep. She doesn't open her eyes, even, but her words are clear enough, if softly spoken.

"I'm sorry. For shutting you out."

And for walking away, but mostly for refusing to hear him in any way in the year that had passed.

He's glad that it seems to relax her. His own thoughts are spinning a bit, but he does his best to keep them quiet, for now. So far, he's avoided talking to his grandfather about his former master and, apparently, the man behind the whole thing, but it might be time for that to change, when there's a chance.

He's starting to wonder if she actually may have fallen asleep when she speaks again. An apology he hadn't expected to ever hear from her, even if they had managed to speak more reasonably again since being here. He doesn't acknowledge it directly, nor does it take away the hurt from all that time, but he won't hide that he's grateful for her saying it.

"It was hard, trying to lead on my own." Even simply being on his own, when he was so used to the presence of another person in his mind, and she'd kept her side of their connection so incredibly silent. It's a confession, not an accusation. A relief, in a way, that for at least a moment, he doesn't have to pretend that he's been just fine this whole time being Supreme Leader alone.

She's very nearly asleep, having used every ounce of her spare energy in trying to keep her emotions in check, and so overwhelmed that she doesn't want to do anything but fall into the nearest bed and sleep until the sun is very firmly down. But she's awake enough to hear him, and to turn her hand so she can squeeze his in acknowledgment and maybe something like a promise. One she hopes she can keep, this time.

You won't be on your own.

She doesn't manage to say it clearly aloud; only murmurs something not quite so intelligible before drowsiness pulls her under. A soft snore a few moments later confirms it; she's quite soundly asleep for at least the next little while.

He feels that squeeze, and he understands it. Trust that it will last is a bit more difficult, after everything, but that doesn't matter so much for right now. He stays there a short while longer, turning his own thoughts over in his head and letting her rest. But it's not too long before he decides to gently extract himself from her.

She's very heavily asleep, it seems, barely stirring at all when he tries to move. Not wanting to just leave her on the front steps, he ultimately decides to scoop her up and carry her inside, quietly willing her to not wake up in the middle of that lest she be less than pleased about being carried somewhere. He sets her down again on a chair, in a different part of the house from where his grandfather has been resting, before returning to Vader. He wants to be able to talk in relative privacy.

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