abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] pre-event (until...)

Unnatural. In the most literal sense.

"Exactly!" Ronan hisses as he sits up, forgetting the assignment entirely. What a fucking relief to find someone who agrees with him! He'd been starting to worry he'd lost his mind or lost touch with reality or something, because he was the only one — the only one — who felt this way.

"It was so weak I couldn't even feel it most of the time. Whenever I did, it felt like... like coming back to life. Like I was dead before that. But then it'd fade again and I'd go right back to dying. Do you feel the Force all the time?"

This time, Kylo doesn't scold or so much as raise an eyebrow as Ronan starts upright. He watches him instead, recognising the ferocity of his reaction as a very familiar flavour of relief.

Ronan, Kylo suspects, hasn't had a lot of support in his quest.

"Always," he says. Even now, with his connection dulled and muted he can still feel something. "Without it there is no life. The Force is life. Every living thing knows it. Even those who try to deny the truth. They know it. Deep within. They know what they are."

Listening to Kylo describe it makes Ronan ache, the words chiseling away at the wall he so hastily constructed around his heart during the last dream. These are the words he's been waiting to hear. He's been waiting for them for so long that it's hard to trust them now. The stare he fixes on Kylo is more scrutinizing than meditative, searching rather than reflecting.

It's very easy to see how Kylo might be one of his. It feels a little like looking into a funhouse mirror, some details drawn forward and others pushed back. Did his subconscious create a home out of fairytales to replace the one he lost? Did he make a more desirable, more entertaining companion to watch over him? How is he supposed to tell whether this is a fantasy?

Ronan looks away.

"They cut me off from it. Before I got here. They want me to die."

Another pause follows. Kylo doesn't need access to the inner workings of Ronan's heart to recognise the current running through them both, an unexpected commonality.

"They're afraid," he murmurs. "Addicted to their own limitations. If you refuse to accept them, they will do everything in their power to destroy you."

Power, of course, being the key. Kylo's gaze has drifted back to his hands. His fingers curl. Nothing happens.

"You'll see. When the haze lifts. I'll show you why they will always fail."

Ronan hadn't known what to expect from Kylo. He hadn't really expected anything at all, considering the grave his trust had dug for him back home. But these affirmations, after everything that's happened, sound suspiciously like everything he wants to hear. Yes, here is the kinship he'd been searching for. Yes, every word of that is true. Yes, finally, here's someone who knows.

Reluctantly, he turns his gaze back to Kylo. Not fully, but askance, as if looking too closely might reveal something deeper that Ronan can't bear to see. His heart can't take it. He can't let himself fall in love with another one of his dreams.

"I hope that's a promise," he says.

It's possible that everything Kylo says is a promise. He may not have the richness of the Force heavy at his back, but the intensity of every deliberate word suggests commitment. There's a strange, crackling current of energy threaded into the low thrum of his voice. Determined would be one word for it, perhaps, but it's bigger than that. Relentless.

"It freed me," he says. "When they tried to kill me. It can free you, too."

Free is the very opposite of how Ronan feels. They sucked the air from his lungs. They cut off his wings. His fellow dreamer, his own brother, Adam... All of them had conspired to destroy him. After everything he'd done for them. He'd saved all their lives and they repaid him by delivering him to his enemies and leaving him to rot with nightwash. He'd thought he'd been alone when he'd been living a solitary life at the Barns, but even that loneliness can't compare to this.

The only person who believed in him was the one who'd been created by him for that purpose. Everyone else would rather see him dead than see him become powerful. What is it about him that makes it so hard for anyone to believe he can do good?

All at once, Ronan understands what Kylo means.

"I never needed any of them."

Not too long ago, Kylo had reached out his hand and pleaded with another traveler on the same path to recognise exactly this. Exactly. The rush now is the direct inverse of the frustration he'd felt then as she'd refused to listen to him, wild and heady in its unexpected alignment. Ronan gets it. He sees.

"Let it go," he agrees. "Everything. Everything you tried to do, everything you tried to be to satisfy them. They have no answers to give you. No power over you. They never did."

What is this place? What world did he invent now, spun from his father's stories and populated with men like this one, urging him to go on even though he's lost everything? Ronan feels dizzy. He shuts his eyes, touching his fingertips to his temple.

Let it go. He's never let anything go. He's not sure he knows how.

"I need to sleep," he murmurs, though what he means is, I need to dream, and he doesn't know whether that's even possible anymore. But the void inside him is growing, starved and yawning. He has to try, at least, or this thing will devour him just like they all hope it will. Ronan lies back, pressing his hand over his eyes.

"Then sleep," Kylo murmurs.

It will be so much easier, once he can reach out through the Force and push Ronan under. The matter of a moment. Idly, he tries it now— flexing his fingers, attempting to find the flow and strain connecting them to each other— but there's nothing to grasp hold of. Nothing but the low, background hum at the very edges of his awareness, like perceiving shifting levels of light from behind closed eyelids.

He hardly notices how his breathing has slid into synchronicity with Ronan's until he realises Ronan is following him, now, his chest rising and falling at a steadily, smoothly slowing pace.

Kylo knows the dark. If Ronan will let him, Kylo will guide him into it just like this. One breath at a time.

[ OPEN ] pre-event (until...)

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