the miracle of a lemniscate

There isn’t a single soul in the Empire who doesn’t know Kylo Ren as he is. The traitor is the only one who knows who he was. There in the landing bay he looks bigger than Kylo remembers, no longer the desperate boy soldier he’d been on Jakku. He’s older now, and his hair is cropped to an even finer stubble — Kylo Ren finds himself wondering if he wears it that way out of old Imperial habit or if it’s something that’s been done to him, if he’s been robbed of something. He’s backed up against the side of a sleek Imperial vessel, with nowhere to go.

“I thought I smelled something,” Finn says.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” Kylo Ren grimaces.

The sound of bombardment overhead, knocking stones from the permacrete-reinforced ceiling — this whole place could go any moment now, and Kylo Ren would have no choice but to —

—to save his life, in saving himself. To encompass both of them in a protective bubble of Force energy, instead of leaving them both to be suffocated under rubble and rebar. Ren could kill him, he should kill him to make up for a lifetime’s worth of grievances, to make up for the simple humiliation of encounter after encounter after encounter without resolution.

He won’t do it.

What’s worse — is that Finn knows. Kylo Ren can feel him in the Force, like the curling of a hand from a fist into slackness. Finn’s rebel heart is still pounding, his chest still rises and falls with rapid pressured breath. He must have run all the way here, Kylo Ren could feel his footsteps almost as much as hear them, the vanishing bootfalls — he could feel the rebel Finn, as steady as a flame.

it almost reassures him, that it is Kylo Ren himself here in all his Imperial glory and not one of his underlings, who would shoot first and never ask questions. Neither of them has any master now. They’re only men, more powerful than either of them could ever have imagined.

“Right,” Finn says. “That wasn’t very nice. I’m sure you smell great.” There’s a light in his eyes, a cocky lift to his chin despite the peril he’s in — his mouth is as stubborn and sensual as ever, crooked in a smirk. Doesn’t he know what danger he’s in? Doesn’t he care? Thick-headed, reckless, no-good rebel scum —

Kylo wants to crush him to himself and to ravage that smart mouth with his own, he wants to devour him, he wants to pour himself into him until himself no longer exists and if he waits here a moment longer he’ll do it. His fingers itch to brush the collar of Finn’s coat away from his tender neck. One long stride, and the distance between them would be halved; another, and there would be nothing to divide them. Nothing at all.

Kylo tosses him the initiator fob, and Finn catches it in a gloved hand, though he flinches at the sudden motion. His face lights up in a grin — he knows exactly what to do with these.

Finn may be thick-headed and reckless, but he’s not stupid. He’s going to take this ship and fly it as far from this planet as he possibly can, and Kylo Ren knows as much too. They will meet again. Kylo Ren will make certain that they meet again, and this — nonsense that exists between them will be resolved.

“Go,” Kylo Ren says. His voice is a broken rattle; his cape swings against his legs, heavy as stone.