Keeping Your Promise

There is No Redemption

Summary: Happy trail worship? Happy trail worship.

Stress enveloped your skull in throbbing pain, Karmen's six-hour rundown stinging your senses and drawing you inward.  Halfway through, you had already begun to feel the excess of information take its toll; Zag's voice – unpleasant in small doses – grated into you, each word coming too fast and leaving too soon.  Thankfully, no doubt to cover herself, she had left you with a thumb drive; it summarized everything she'd mentioned.

After the ordeal, when she left by the sharp click of her heels, you understood why it was recommended to arrive two days prior to the initial hearing: you were utterly and dreadfully exhausted.  After unpacking – ensuring easy access to your favorite socks and keeping Snoke's letter tucked into the back drawer of a desk – you had sat in bed for an hour trying to refresh with the thumb drive's contents; you'd were determined to be prepared for tomorrow's shift at Canto Bight's recovery wing.  If nothing else, you would not make a fool of yourself during your practice here.  This you swore to yourself.

At some point you had drifted to sleep, waking to find your cheek stuck to the datapad that'd been propped up before you.  The sunset woke you with a searing ray of light, screaming fuchsias and hazy purples warming your outstretched arm as they cast through open curtains.  The breeze rolled off of the bay and tickled loose hair over your nape, a deep breath stretching your lungs awake before you unfurled from yourself.

The radar at your wrist indicated Kylo Ren was near but not in his quarters, probably not inside the building.  It was a confusing feeling – the unsteadiness you felt when revisiting your earlier interaction, the vagueness of his words contradicted by the certainty in which they'd been delivered, but simultaneously this calm in your chest since you had left him.  Although you had no idea what he'd gone on about, or what in time meant, his mere presence – the fact that he was near and would continue to be – allowed you these glimmers of peace.

Not since Starkiller.  Not since Snoke.  Not Mason and his baseless confidence, no matter how much you wished to latch onto it; not Talia, who had helped you back from your darkest moment.  The only things that stilled you were the known proximity of your master, and the nature of the words he'd earlier spoken.  You'd felt it that recent night on the Finalizer, how it lingered in your muscles just before you'd dozed off, how it seemed his presence had scared your nightmares away.

However ridiculous and backwards, Kylo Ren – the one whose pain is printed on your skin, who led a slaughter just strides away from you – had become a constant.  It was never what you had expected, but when you thought of the trial now, what eased your nerves was nothing less than the raven-haired warrior whose face was slashed with midnight hues of pain.

Much like you, you'd come to realize, he had survived Starkiller, and the event changed him.  Though you could not know for sure, you began to wonder if what had gone on had not only left him with the wounds that'd wet your skin, but perhaps ones that were deeper – ones that were not so visible.  Something happened before that explosion, something more than whatever fight had earned him that scar.

You shook your head; this was too much to think on right now.  With a throw draped over your back, you trudged through the room and out into the chill of your side-balcony.  This sky held more beauty than any you'd ever seen; you watched the sun descend, spying a domed, octagonal pavilion at the far left of the side gardens.  It dripped with violet-petaled ropes and emerald ivies, was supported by scalloped columns entwined with twinkling blooms welded from gold, the whole stage centered around a sunken fire pit.

Considering for a moment, you saw it would have a better view of the sunset, and you'd been cooped up since arriving.  It was a quick decision, catching view of a spiral of stairs that led to the grounds, but only after noting the pair of doors a few paces left of your room's.  They were closed, and the inner curtains seemed to be shut, the room behind them dark.  Empty.