A/N: At the request of a friend, I am endeavoring to write a continuation of TLJ. As a fair warning to all who read this fic, my knowledge of the current Star Wars canon is limited, for I grew up reading the original canon books (the ones that are now labeled "Legends.") Therefore, all of my knowledge of the current movie characters comes from the movies themselves. My deepest apologies if I stray too far from the current canon in my flashbacks.

I would also like to acknowledge my new editor, Anghara - with her wonderful assistance, this fic will soon be edited and error-free!

The build-up to reylo will take awhile, fair warning, due to my belief that neither character is exactly in the right frame of mind to simply have this fic incorporate a fast-paced relationship. Bear with me, though, it'll happen.

Rating is "M" based on later chapters' content: Dark psychological themes, torture, and questionable morals. I'll post warnings at the beginning of chapters. No real warnings in this first chapter.

Cover photo retrieved from Pinterest in a free-to-use section.

Disclaimer: In no way do I own any part of Star Wars. Though I do claim the OCs which will appear in later chapters as my own.
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Staring out into the fathomless depths of space caused an eerie sense of calm to wash over Kylo Ren. In the five excruciating days since the mutual failure of both the First Order and what remained of the Resistance on Crait, he had barely had the time to sleep or eat, much less take the time to try and contain the majority of his raging emotions.

Due to the tension hanging over every head in the First Order and the mixture of fearful and skeptical glances he received from those soldiers meant to be underlings who would never dare to question their leader, it was becoming abundantly clear to Kylo that he could no longer afford to lose his temper on a daily basis.

Now, standing alone on the observation deck, he forced himself to peel back the shoddily-constructed mental barriers that he had hoped would keep the most potent of his emotions in check until he could properly address them.

Just days before, he had been flooded with such unbridled fury that he felt it would burn all logic away, leaving only an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. That rage had since diminished into a cooling ember.

Trepidation began gnawing its way into the outermost portions of his mind, where his defenses faltered the most. Anger is my strongest ally, he thought grimly. Without anger fueling my connection to the dark side, I become vulnerable.

Weakness was never an option.

Momentarily brushing aside the cobwebs of concern, he delved deeper into the layers of conflicting emotions burdening his overtaxed psyche. Disbelief in the events of the past few days threatened to overwhelm him. Had he really gone from murdering his master just to save the girl who ought to have been his nemesis to offering to throw away most of what he had spent the past eight years building to make aforementioned girl pleased, to almost losing himself to a rage he could barely control when confronted with the Force projection of his uncle, all in the span of a couple of hours?

Locked inside his mind where no one else could see, he debated why it was that he felt more disappointed and let down than angry. By all reason, he felt that he ought to be livid that Luke Skywalker had had the audacity to die a somewhat peaceful - if confusing and anti-climatic - death instead of being torn to shreds by Kylo's lightsaber, as had always been the plan.

Yet, the deeper he delved into his emotions, the more he found that the old rage which once had burned fiercely against his uncle had faded into a numb acceptance. The realization was both startling and comforting. Perhaps now he would be able to focus on destroying the Resistance once and for all.

Except...destroying the Resistance meant eliminating every remaining person in the galaxy who held a shred of hope that he would somehow find his way back from the caverns of darkness in which he freely wandered. Years of training under Snoke, combined with many more years of constantly being told to squelch his conflicting emotions had taken their toll on his consciousness so he could no longer tell - even in his own mind - if his actions could be considered moral.

Hope is the most dangerous weapon.

For a brief moment, when that girl - he ardently refused to say her name, even in the safety of his own mind - had wormed her way into his head with her unwavering faith that it was never too late for people to change, he had allowed himself to believe that his destiny could lay somewhere other than at his master's feet. He had felt no sympathy, no rage, no hesitation when he had activated his grandfather's lightsaber and cut down his master.

Only now were the implications of his actions beginning to fully dawn on him.

When his connection with the girl had first begun, when it had strengthened into an uneasy alliance, when it had glistened with the promise of being an actual friendship, he had allowed himself to wonder what it would be like to turn aside from his current path and forge a new one. One free of a master's control, one in which he decided right from wrong, one in which his destiny could be changed.

But then, after offering all of himself, the girl had simply rejected him and turned away. Hadn't she understood how hard he had fought just to be standing there with her in that moment? She had claimed to see the conflict within him, to understand how it felt to be alone among a sea of people. How could she so easily rip his heart from his chest and crush it?

It was not the pull of the light that had drawn him to her, for he knew better than to walk that path. No, it had been the sureness of her own morality, the resolve in her soft eyes when she promised to help rescue him from the prison he had been thrown in many years prior.

As a child, he sat calmly on the stone floor, staring at the prison cell door with all of the innocent belief that came from wholeheartedly believing that one's elders knew best.

Growing into adolescence, he found himself testing the limits of his cage, pulling against the metal bars with all the strength he could muster. Doubt creeped deep into his soul and burrowed a hole into his heart. His once unwavering faith began to falter.

By the time he became a young adult, most of the damage had been dealt. Small nicks in his soul weathered and aged him prematurely. Passionate arguments with his parents turned into an estrangement much more severe than the loneliness he had often encountered as a child. His uncle's once comforting teachings of the Jedi Order and its ways turned his stomach sour and muddled his brain: there were so many discrepancies, so many conflicting modes of thought.

The idea of blindly following what he was told and pushing away all sense of emotion and individual thought made his blood boil. How could so many of his uncle's students nod their heads in agreement to teachings which not even the members of the old Jedi Order had wholly followed?

And yet, for all the peace and serenity that the Jedi preached, for all their talk of goodness, no one had bothered to try and save him. At the first hint of discord, they had all fled - his mother, his father, his friends, and worst of all his uncle. What good was knowledge if questioning it set a person apart?

What good were people if they tried to cut down whatever was different?

It had been so many years since he had considered another way of life that the girl's odd, seemingly-misplaced trust in him had stirred up those desperate feelings from his childhood of wanting to belong, of wanting someone to see him for him, not for his family's legacy.

He had been drowning without knowing he was anywhere near water.

Then, like a whirlwind, she had invaded his head and forced him to reconsider everything.

And just like everyone who had come before, she had taken one quick glance at the damage he had wrought, the conflict that constantly battled inside, and had decided nothing could be done to patch him back together.

The irony of the situation forced a low chuckle from his throat. If he was conflicted, what was she? Yes, he had long ago given into the darkness within himself. But he felt that darkness so profoundly in her - such a savior she was turning out to be. It would take little effort to push her spiraling into the void. She had no restraint over her emotions, no idea where those damning emotions could lead if she continued to let them run wild. Soon enough, they would consume her, no matter her "pure" intentions.

With that thought, Kylo Ren uncovered the last key to his emotional hailstorm: guilt. Guilt over the girl's predicament, guilt that the Jedi Master who should have been willing to teach her had taken one look into her soul and had seen too much of a wayward former student, guilt that he himself was too consumed with his own conflict to give her advice.

Even if he could reach her now, he doubted that she would take kindly to any advice he had to offer.

But there was no one else remaining who could keep her from falling from grace. It was wrong, he knew, it was hypocritical to try and teach her anything about the Force when he had fallen so far from the ways of the Jedi. But seeing the clash of light and dark in her mind awoke a strange sense of protectiveness within him: she could not follow him down into the void; he had never meant to tempt her with that offer to begin with - he had merely wanted to help free her from his uncle's influence before the Jedi tarnished her soul as well.

He would never return to the light, for it had never accepted him - choosing instead to judge and choke the life from him.

Neither could he allow her to cross the threshold and embrace the dark. With her limited experience with the Force, it would swallow her whole.

I may be unbalanced, he acknowledged, but I am the only chance she has to survive. And I will do whatever it takes to stop her inevitable descent. I cannot change my course, just as I cannot be saved, but I will not drag her down with me.

A persistent pull on his mind startled him. Rey. Squaring his shoulders, determination coursing through his body, he turned slowly.

Confusion filled him as his eyes skipped over an empty room. Perhaps the bond is too weak to allow for visual contact?

The pressure in his skull intensified, forcing a gasp from his throat. Struggling through the building pain and the hastily spreading darkness from the corners of his mind, he steadied his gaze on the fuzzy outline of a person emerging into view.

Darkness gripped his mind, scattering all thoughts of his personal redemption in the eyes of the girl he was supposed to hate. A cold dread settled into his bones even as the void in his head overtook his threshold for pain.

Desperately, he reached out for the Force to create a barrier between himself and the image which was quickly becoming clearer, only to have his connection with the darkness swatted away.

Images flickered through his mind with such speed that his mind recoiled in protest. In a vain attempt for control, he fumbled to grab onto an image, only to have it be swept past a second later, pulled along by the unrelenting course of what he assumed were memories. Hundreds of emotions stirred within him, all vying for his immediate attention.

Weak...The darkness whispered, You are weak.

Fear overtook him then, spreading like a cancer throughout his entire being, chasing out all of the light which contaminated his soul.

He had to know. He had to be sure.

With all his remaining strength, he cracked his eyes open. In any other situation, he would have been enraged to find that he had fallen to his knees. His sweat-slicked hands pressed hard on the cold, metal floor, feebly trying to find a way to anchor his mind. Tears ran down his face, squeezed from his eyes through the intensity of his pain. Darkness flickered over his vision, threatening to crush him.

A red glow as bright and dangerous as the energy expelled from his lightsaber enveloped the man standing before him, glowering down from above.

"Master," he croaked in disbelief.

The sickening, victorious smirk that stretched over the former Supreme Leader's scarred face was the last thing Kylo Ren registered before slipping into the darkness.
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Thank you for reading!

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