#nightmarefuele

“You call my implications accusatory?” Inscrutable, a monotone layer of disinclined voice beneath a mask. He rules the space above her without so much as tipping his visor. “Careful, princess ─ you already misstepped, and I only made an observation.” He idles at the behest of her family's crude technology. They've digitalized caches for their libraries, and networks communicate between the planet's nodal points, but these are not the systems built for reconnaissance or galactic intelligence. Kylo Ren stares into the frigid soul of a transmuting interface: blues on purples on blues, overlaid against the backdrop wilderness beyond verandas, and chilled springtime air, crisp on twilight's eve. He might be more patient with the panels if not for her fatuous pretense. He might be more patient with her if not for the panels. “For a royal girl who makes a public mockery of her name, you still encourage every parvenu who so much as looks your way. Do they whisper pretty words? Do you actually believe them?” When Kylo looks down at her, his tracery is sharper, cutting, electrified by the neon cold. His mask has been relieved of its cowl and now wears a crown of the dying suns beyond the sunroof. “I told you when those self-avowed politicians landed not to involve yourself. Whatever affairs you've arranged, end them.”

"No. You've overstepped." Romantic politics did not fall under the umbrella of his concern. Raoul had been the catapult back to her desire bone. The predecessor to the pedestal boyfriend. A glimmer of hope that all she once was and felt could be felt again. But he wasn't everlasting. The passion did not throb but dimmed. Nevertheless, the thread of chemistry that initially caught them must still buzz. She does not know how else Kylo would know there was something deeper than acquaintance or suspect anything had been arranged currently. The dialogue exchanged hadn't been flirtatious, had it?

It's sting to the salt when he brings up her repute in such a manner. And even his obvious jealousy does nothing to soothe it. At least not soon enough to soften the blow and the expression that flickers across her face before attempting to replace it with something more bare.

"You exude envy. It's all I feel from you right now. Do you believe it as you try to deny it? Because I don't think you do."

He reveals his face and her heart hitches. Verity rushes in and causes unsteady knees. She takes a half step back on impulse. But her chin tips up to meet his gaze as recovery. She's glad she's said what she could because, with actual eye contact, she feels less brave to address the man behind the machine. Or rather, be reminded that he was no machine nor monster at all, but just a boy. If Raoul was a catapult, Kylo felt like the hand she was thrown into. And it was pure fire. She was not afraid of him but afraid of how he made her feel.

She feels him before she sees them. One polarity calling to another. (A light in the tunnel. A sound in the dark.) Finn's cries of agony echo in the hollow of her, reverberating until she's left feeling like her bones will soften and bend long before they break.

Han is gone. Rey couldn't save him. But there's still a chance for Finn.

Even now.

A thud. Her companion's body is left for the dirt before she can even get to him, saber-severed and helpless. Doomed like the lily blooms beneath snow's breath. Was she too late? There's no echo of his soul in the air that she can feel. Not like Han's.

“In the forest. Your eyes. You had seen me already, hadn't you? The Force showed me to you.”

Kylo calls to her and the saber does too. (Her anger is louder than his tenacity.) The universe may have robbed her of a family first, but when his thrumming red sank in to cauterize Han's heart, Kylo killed more than just a man. Needlepoint accuracy. Luke's saber flies to the home of her hand like its been waiting for her all along.

She breathes it to life with a whirring hummmmm...

"You're a monster." Spat like a bitter poison. His question is only answered by the hesitant recognition of her gaze. She's seen him already... seen glimpses of this already. He knows. Rey's gaze diverts for a moment, but only a moment. A glance at the melting snow beside Finn's mouth is all she needs to know he's still breathing. Barely. She turns to face Kylo head-on, a heat-seeking missile of anger and grief. (Him or her?)

"What have you done?"

“I long to be soulless, I tingle to touch the sea in the last surprise of fiery coldness, to be gone in a lost soul’s bliss.”

— D.H. Lawrence, from Selected Poems of D.H. Lawrence; “Love Storm.”

{ 🫀 @nightmarefuele broke and bought: Music!Ben :// accepting }

A bat could make a home here. Here, in the ribbed vaults of a converted church, picking up bits of billionaire guano with its lenses. You know, as bats do.  

Ben manages to fit himself into its new religion, although he doesn’t belong in its tax bracket. To the corporate crooks and hookers who wouldn’t recognize his profile on a marble column, Ben’s a lounge goon with peculiar taste in clothes. Or he’s just a faggot, which put his companion’s overcoat and mascara eyebags in a different light. 

“Wayne.” Ben is admonishing, disappointed, sober. The architecture of his face and the shadow of his gaze rival the masonry. “Are you pretending to be stupid?” 

He leans forward, fingers clasped together, bridging the space between his knees, his thighs. 

 “It’s working.”

after fury, what do you do with the remains? 

sword of moons. qimir wakes up to discover osha pressing a blade against his throat.

it was dark. behind his eyelids, hours after dusk. the only light left was the feel of her in the force—there was a small light left in the dagger too. 

he came to. hours before dawn, ahead of schedule. lashes fluttered lazily, lids lifting only halfway into hooded eyes. he blinked slowly; some beast loosened from some dark depth. but in truth, he saw her with startling clarity. his concentration was sharper when pulled out of his zen, like a carved blade straight off the stone.

he watched her, looked at her, with really no other reason but that he could. his gaze walked slow across the smooth expanse of her face. his eyes touched the tip of her forehead, and he twitched the corner of his lip into a smile. the smile was gone as quickly as it had come; it became light, and lived in his eyes. (it would die there too, as many before it had.) 

he looked into her eyes to see what lived in them. he wanted to ask her what she meant to do now, what she would do after. where she planned to put her rage after rigor mortis set in and he could no longer take it from her with his skin and into his bloodstream. after fury, what do you do with the remains? the severity of his curiosity, he was certain the question echoed somewhere in the dark, reached her somehow, across the force. he lay as still as stone, put himself at her mercy, with really no other reason but that he could. he swallowed, so his skin would press on the blade.

There is no century what wilt a dark power forever at bay. For this moon's ghost-sands wherethrough Ren writes his quiet passage—hunting—but recount the oldest story, of a fig pitted too soon; and in its husk, something bleaker evolves, seducing bodies in-orbit anew. As Ren's pall spreads amidst gnarls of trees, his presence pressuring the open stair that drives down unto a sepulchre's wall below, even the wind is ushered. Commanded by the blackness closed therein. “You are not secret. Wake.” He remains above, daggered chin staring down.

The thing within the confines of the Codex had seen empires rise and empires fall. He had seen the whole of planets raise and planets fall, the all encompassing devourer of Light set to inhale it all within the hungering Void. Yet, here he had been made to rest, on a long forgotten heap of rock and eternal desert, where his plague could not reach where humanity had sought to explore.

The prison had been made to never be found, the monster beneath never meant to walk the world once more. Far fitting, then, that a man set to conquer would find the resting place of Death himself. With an ancient understanding--though how much Ren did understand would remain to be seen-- those words had stirred the personification of Hunger and brought him once more to wake.

For what might have felt hours, eventually did the Codex fly wide its eldritch bars and from the confines of the sepulcher, a voice rattled both within and outside of Ren's peripheral mind.

the sound of marching footsteps through the dark smog of the undercity thrums heavily with the clank of metal on soot. she has a finger glued to her trigger, tight and twitching through each troop and stomp that empties the streets. she's here for one reason and one reason only — with a team behind her, a heavy cape hanging limply off her shoulders, and a gun twice the size of her, she's there to tell them she's not fucking around.

and perhaps that's the problem. they scuttle into shadows and slip down alleyways, and it reminds her of vi hurtling across a tin-can roof or leaping through a rotting wooden support beam. it reminds her of a life that feels so alien to her, yet so intoxicating all the same. a bar light flickers, and the quick snap of her neck settles her eyes on a cloaked figure that gasps, jumps, and throws themselves back into the darkness before she gets a good look at them. that way.

her head tilts, nods in the direction of the defunct storefront, and resets her shoulders toward it. the door creaaaaks open full of silence. (staunch silence, save for the low hum of a drip drip drip from somewhere in the dark.)

being the centre of the world is intoxicating, isn't it?

it wrenches a gasp from her throat, and the muzzle of her gun toward the direction of the voice. (it's dark. it's empty. there are heavy beams and steelworks like she's never seen before — oozing fluorescent liquids drip drip dripping from across the room on a tabletop bar like two minutes ago there was a party just broken up. she's not surprised, really — her experience down here has been just that recently: confirmation.)

"you come out, now." with the gun still trained in the direction of a dismembered voice, there's that seed of doubt beginning to spread in her stomach — he could be anywhere. he could be peeling his claws off the grooves of the wall boards like a malicious spider, or swinging his toes off the rafters, poised to pounce. she is not prey, but it feels distinctly more ominous in the dark.

❝ You haven't had it so easy, have you? Staring down the future the same way you look after your past; always with both feet pointing at death's door. ❞ from @nightmarefuele

Christ, he had just wanted to get black out drunk in peace. Finishing off his bourbon, he slammed the shot glass against the wood bar top and flagged down the bartender for another round. Looking at the dark haired man next to him, he was a younger man, he'd clock him maybe around 30-35. He was a good looking kid and about as pretentious as one would expect from someone that looked like that.