#lightequal 02

it would be a lie to say things were not still STILTED between them. she had done her best for days now, had been almost aggressively cheerful in an attempt to pretend there was not some dark cloud hanging over them, like she had not made a decision that could very well still lead to her own death. ( like she had not let a wolf sleep next to her at night, both of them cold and shivering and yet still unable to move closer to one another. ) it had been awkward. it had been uncomfortable. it had been stilted. 

but he had gone with her, when she’d asked. he had taken her hand instead of the throne, for better or for worse, and he would not go back on that now. 

the condition had been simple: don’t take me back to her. i cannot face her. not yet. maybe not ever. she had wanted to argue, was still trying to figure out the best way to, sometimes, but still, she hadn’t gone back on her word. his mother was somewhere out there, still, waiting for him to come home, waiting, like rey, for him to step into the light, to return and take his place as THE PRODIGAL SUN. 

he was not the prodigal son. he was not the dark messiah. he was nothing his mother had hoped he’d be, nothing snoke had promised him he would become. he was not some godlike figure, a deity among mere mortals, nor was he the son his mother carried in her skin and muscle and in her arms and his father had carried upon his shoulders. he was something else, now, something human and not human, something more.

SOMETHING LESS.

and stepping into the light was not a triumphant thing, not anymore. it would be a process. a gradual, slow thing, learning how to lean into the sunlight instead of shying away from it. ( things were so much safer in the darkness, where his skin had gone pale and his heart had gone cold and he understood its language of pain and power. the light . . . the light was blinding. ) 

and this . . . perhaps this was the next step, into the sunlight. perhaps by asking this of her, he was taking steps backwards in his life, closer to a time when a boy named ben had dreams of becoming a great jedi, a legend, just like his uncle. 

or perhaps he’d merely let his hair grow too long in between hacking away at it, and it had been too long since they’d left snoke’s ship, and it was beginning to tickle the skin just under his collar, and it was beginning to bother him. 

❛ rey? ❜ he begins. when was the last time he’d called her by name? it feels foreign in his mouth, suddenly, the syllable all wrong. he WONDERS, not for the first time, whether that was the name her parents gave her, so long ago, or one she carved out of the desert stones and sands all on her own.