•LEGACY - A Reylo Story•

EPISODE VII - THE LIGHT

The Light.

It pulsates within him. He can't stop it.

And that's what Rey is. The Light.

He doesn't want the Light. He needs to extinguish it, in himself, in Rey. But he likes the way helping her feels. He likes seeing her improve, even slightly, even if she still hates him.

And to quench the Light in her... Kylo fears that would destroy her, smother the very essence of what made her Rey.

It will make her more powerful. As Snoke's made you more powerful. It will help her become whom she's meant to be...

He laughs, because the words bang and clang, hollow and futile.

If this is what you're meant to be, do you want to be this?

Could I even become anything else? he wonders.

It's too late.

It wasn't then.

But it is now. There can be no going back. Not when he slaughtered the man who tried to offer him redemption, lured him out on the bridge, teetering back and forth in his own mind, with the Light urging him to hand over the lightsaber, fall into his father's arms and weep, and the Dark urging him to get as close as he could to the Light and rip it all away, use what he thought of as his weakness to accomplish the Dark's purposes.

Kylo remembers the vacuum of horror that opened up within him as Han fell. There was no Light, and there was no Dark. There was nothing.

Murderer.

After the Knights of Ren attacked Luke's Jedi academy, Snoke told him that his father had gone back to smuggling, and Kylo knew that the only way his father would leave his mother was if he thought there was no hope. Kylo knew his father had given him up for dead, probably wished he were actually dead instead of serving Snoke.

And when his father called out to him on that bridge, Kylo couldn't believe it.

I've been waiting for this day for a long time.

Snoke had been waiting, with one end in mind. Ben had been waiting, not even daring to hope for that day, with another end in mind.

My son is alive.

We miss you.

It wasn't a lie, Kylo realizes. At the time, the Light told him to believe, to trust his father, and the Dark screamed and warned him not to fall for it. And when he listened to the Dark and stabbed his father, he saw that Han had been telling the truth all along.

Kylo clutches his face, the same place Han had touched. He did miss you. He loved you.

"Sir?" The stormtrooper bangs on the door again.

"What?"

"The girl! She's-she's gone!"

Kylo grasps his lightsaber. He needs to find her, or fail forever in Snoke's eyes.

As he stalks off the ship to search for her, something stirs within him. Shame. The feeling that he's failing in a far more significant way.