"the monument of a memory, you tear it down in your head" - from Florence + the Machine's Various Storms and Saints
Please reblog with your response to the above prompt, or submit your response to the kylux cantina!
This is the solid truth: for a long time, Ben wanted.
He didn’t do things quietly, he never had; but this was a quiet thing, dark and glittering, a crystal catching moonlight. He spent time with it, prodding at it to see if it would grow or change, but it didn’t. It kept silent, contained to his chest, but beating: an organ that offered no purpose to his body or his blood aside from becoming a monument to things unhad and unused.
Ben was waiting for it to flare, this kyber heart. For a time, he thought it was the Force. That if he grew stronger, fought harder, meditated into deeper states, he could find the missing spark. He didn’t. He thought of consulting his uncle. He considered asking his nameless master:
What is this? It haunts me so quietly. Is this the dark side? Is this what Vader had?
When he left the Jedi, when he destroyed the temple, it did nothing. He went to Snoke, and it stayed with him.
“My apprentice,” Snoke said, after a time. “You’ve been a worthy disciple. You have earned a reward for your work.”
Kylo Ren bowed his head. He murmured thank you.
This was the moment, he was sure. Snoke would either tear the crystal from him or make it burn.
“You’ve earned a command, in my great army. They’ve sent a shuttle for you. So that you may take your place as my eyes and ears aboard a Star Destroyer of my choosing. It is your destiny.”
Destiny was something close to what Ren sought. His heart, the real one, pummeled his breast like a winged beast. He always felt damp, sweaty with nerves he refused to voice. It was suddenly worse. How could he walk this new path with perspiration wetting the back of his neck.
“The shuttle approaches,” Snoke intoned.
“So soon?”
“Destiny waits for no one, not even one so powerful as you.”
“I—“ Ren chewed at his lower lip. He fumbled for his mask, to jam it into place and cover his hot cheeks and moist skin.
Snoke sent him to to hanger bay to wait alone. Not even the guards escorted him. Suddenly he felt like a sacrifice. The dogs of betrayal forthcoming nipped at him fearfully.
It was just a normal shuttle. That’s what landed. An Imperial model updated. The gangway hissed open, boots hit the durasteel like drumbeats. Ren held his breath while the haze cleared way to reveal a man equally alone. He doffed his command cap, he had the brightest hair Ren had ever seen, and looked Ren over like he’d been expecting someone else.
“You’re the apprentice?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Major Hux, of the First Order.”
“I know,” said Ren, because he did. He’d been waiting for this exact moment. The thing in his chest thrummed, it pulsed, it grew into a blinding heat. His body felt strange and aflame at this sight of this Major Hux. He was in trouble. He would need to be mean, if he wanted to be free. How hadn’t he realized it would be a burden to feel even more?
“Let’s go,” Hux said. “We can’t be late.”
Ren decided to hate him.
