Bonded

Chapter 41: Unforgiven

But not anymore.

Now she's the doorway to an avalanche of horrors, and once it's opened, there's no stopping it.

Because when he thinks about Rey, he thinks about the last time he saw her. He thinks about her lying, whispering secrets to his mother even after she promised she wouldn't. Then, he thinks about all the things she's likely told her...

And that's when it starts, the involuntary montage, a mixture of memories and imagined conversations.

His mother smiling down at him as they walk into the Senate. The way she nods when she listens, brown eyes sharp. How she used to ruffle his hair and wink at him. Her voice when she's angry, the way it deepens like thunder.

He sees her leaning forward, tilting her head as she listens to Rey. She looks young in his mind, though he knows she's not. Her hair is probably gray, face wrinkled like his father's, but he can only picture her as she was the last time he saw her.

She's tilting her chin up as Rey tells her about his problems with Hux. She's darkening when Rey tells her about the Knights, about J'ia. She shakes her head when Rey tells her about Apatros, how he only helped her after she gave him an ultimatum. Her throat tightens when Rey tells her about his nightmares, her eyes pained as she's reminded of everything she's lost, everything he took from her.

And with the images come the emotions— the guilt, the shame, the yearning.

And the paranoia.

He feels her. He feels his mother watching him. Before, he was hidden, the traces of his former self concealed behind a carefully cultivated image.

But now he's out in the open, exposed.

She knows. She knows all of it. Now she can see him...

She can see his insecurity. She can see his fear. She can see his longing. She can see everything.

He swears he actually feels her thinking about him. He's always aware of it, like she's right behind him, looking over his shoulder.

She's even in his dreams. She's in the nightmare now, her voice quiet and steady. He hears it at the very end, at the height of the horror, that final moment between his father falling from the bridge and his eyes flying open.

It's just a whisper, the last thing she ever said to him.

You'll always be my boy.

He shudders at the memory. He hears the words every night— every damn night.

Before, he'd only been having the nightmares once a week, but after finding out about his mother, he's having them multiple times a night. As hard as his days are, he dreads the nights, what waits for him when he closes his eyes...

And this couldn't be happening at a worse time. With the way things are now— the chaos, the fighting, the attempts to undermine his authority— he needs to be alert, vigilant.

Instead, he's barely able to function. He's hardly aware of himself as he stumbles half-wake through meetings, inspections, reports... More and more, he can't concentrate, voices running together as his lids drift over his eyes.

He's unraveling. He can feel it in his mind, his body. He's unraveling and the First Order is too, his grip on the organization loosening. There was a time when he was always thinking about the future, his ambitions, his plans. But now he's trapped in the present, forced to take it day by day, trying to make sure there'll be a future.