Cruel World [Professor Kylo Ren AU]

Chapter One

The inside of my mind feels like a tomb.

dark

alone

abandoned.

The cobwebs stop anyone from visiting

and from looking for too long,

scared to see inside.

If nothing in life is free,

then what am I paying for?

"It's shit."

Kylo's eyebrows raised, taken back. "What?" He asked, he must've heard him wrong.

"This poem is shit. I hate it." Snoke, Kylo Ren's editor, repeated himself as he leaned back in his plush office chair and folded his arms across his chest. "The company can't publish this. In fact, we can't publish anything you've given me in the past six months, I've told you that."

The walls of his office felt like they were pulsating, closing in around Kylo. His hand went to his pocket, desperate to light one of his cigarettes. It was his go-to lately, one of the last stress relievers he had left.

Instead, Kylo ran his large, capable hands over his face with a sigh. In all honesty, he hated the poem as well. If someone else had written it, he would've laughed at them. Comparing his mind to a tomb? How much more remedial could he get?

He hated everything he'd written in the past six months, perhaps longer than that, in fact. Kylo felt like a failure in many different aspects of life.

He'd been with Palpatine Publishers for a while now and for years he was writing pure gold for them. Kylo lost count of how many times he'd been on the bestseller's list and how many book signing tours he'd been on during his career, filling up entire venues with fans who wanted his signature. 

But Kylo's creativity was currently at a standstill. He felt like he was drowning.

"Look," Snoke sighed. "You've been through a lot this past year, I get it. But all of your writing lately sounds like a fifteen-year-old girl on her period wrote it. I was okay with a few 'woe is me' pieces at first but I need you to switch it up now. I'm sick of hearing about how alone you are."

Kylo frowned and kept his eyes down on his hands that were now folded in his lap. His thumb ghosted over his now bare ring finger and at the realization, he focused his attention on his expensive watch instead.

Whenever his editor wasn't happy with Kylo's writing, he felt like he was getting ridiculed by a parent. For someone who was usually extremely confident, even cocky at times, Snoke never failed to make Kylo feel like an idiot with his disappointment.