Conflicted

“It was Snoke.”

Han drew back slightly. “Snoke? [.] You knew this from the beginning? Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sighed. “Many reasons. I was hoping that I was wrong, that it wasn’t true. I hoped I could sway him, turn him away from the dark side, without having to involve you.”

He had trouble believing what he was hearing. “So Snoke was watching our son.”

“Always,” she told him. “From the shadows, in the beginning, even before I realized what was happening, he was manipulating everything, pulling our son toward the dark side.

~

“At last,” came a voice, and Ren whirled, seeking its source. It was raspy and half mechanized, straining as though in pain, and yet the sound reverberated within his very being. “Snoke trained you well,” the voice said. Kylo knew that voice. He’d heard it his whole life. As a young man it had been like the wisp of a dream, one he couldn’t quite grasp. Then the Emperor’s transmission had flooded the galaxy, and Kylo had begun to dread that Palpatine had somehow survived, that his had been the whispering voice that had comforted, guided, tormented him for so many years.

“I killed Snoke,” Kylo said. “I’ll kill you.”

“My boy, I made Snoke. I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, the timbre of his voice morphing, becoming first Snoke, then Vader, and settling on Palpatine. “I have been your Master all along.”

~

Snoke had lied about that. Snoke had lied about all of it. All those voices in his head, torturing him throughout the years, they had promised him that a moment like this could never happen.

*They don’t care about you. Just their precious New Republic*.

And later, *Just their precious Resistance*.

All lies.

~

Kylo like Anakin.

Engineered to suffer.

Twisted and tortured by the supreme manipulator.

Torn apart, their minds and souls bleeding for thirty, forty years.

Sure, it would be reductive to claim they had absolutely no choice.

That they did not play any part.

But when you are abused over and over, all the barriers fall, the will bends.

There is no line, there is no limit.

[Photo: absolutely superb @ritarussiandoll_pins, design by @yanh_hyung]