DEFIANT • kylo ren (18+)

21 - You.

You wake up on your side, a pillow under your head and a warm blanket wrapped around you. Your body doesn't ache. Your skin feels perfectly fine. Your wrist does not hurt. What the fuck?

You sit up, peeling your bandages away. Your arms are smooth and healed, few fresh scars litter your shoulders as you pull your top down to see. You're able to completely remove your wound dressings. You leave your cast alone, worried it isn't fully healed. How did this happen?

You look up, forgetting everything when you lay eyes on the book in front of you.

The notebook, your sketchbook, is placed on the coffee table before you. A pencil, a pen and an eraser sit neatly beside it. You, hesitantly, avert your eyes, to see a glass of water beside that and a plate of fruit awaiting you.

The fruit is devoured quickly, the glass drunk fully, and a pencil in your hand within a few minutes.

Before you touch the graphite to paper, you flip through the pages. Kylo Ren's sullen face, his angry eyebrows, his silhouette in a doorway lay out on the page in scribbled shades of grey.

A side profile study, then a light sketch from memory. You skim through them quickly, trying to ignore the strange emotions arising when you're reminded of the intimacies you shared back on that ship.

On a blank page, you begin to sketch Ap'lek, laying out the foundation of his bone structure and placement of his scars. There's something missing in those cloudy blue eyes. He does not hold that dark weight of something twisted, that pool of black, that hidden mystery, the way that Kylo's eyes do. They're almost... cold. Kylo's are too hot.

They differ from each other in ways you're sure you've only noticed because of how intimate you've been with Ren. Kylo's jaw is clenched with the burdens of his role, his brows furrowed and his expression mirroring that of a man who has been to hell and back again - returning only with the title of Lucifer himself. His eyes burn with endless kerosene. His hair flows from his head like a crown of darkness. A crown you would bet your life he has earned.

As the angles of Ap'lek become refined, you ensure to capture the air of softness about him. It's a strange feeling he elicits, untrustworthy in his kindness. How could a trained killer act this way? The evidence of his job and his burdening responsibilities lie in the scarred nose your pencil is poised on. You sketch the subtle mangled bone, proof of a fistfight or two - as it's clearly been broken before.

Ap'leks brown hair is shorter than Kylo's, but only slightly. It settles around his ears in a similar way, but curly. Unruly. Confusing.

Growing frustrated, you put the book down. You like to draw from life, and you wish one of the knights were here now.

The door opens.

You're taken aback a little, having had no warning in the Force and not sensing someones presence puts you on edge. You try to ignore how your heart pounds a dangerous song when you see who it is.

Vicrul stalks through the door, fully armed and his helmet on. His scythe glints with menace. It sends cold chills through your veins, icing over when you notice something you hadn't figured before.

His mask looks oddly similar to that of a grenade.

No eyes. Just a small visor.

And while his black cloaks mimic the other knights, the material differs. It shines with a certain quality of leather, or reptilian hide, as if he had slain a large creature and now wears it's skin in victory.

Vicrul does not care that you're in the den, he doesn't even give you the time of day to sweep his gaze in your direction as he strolls toward the bar.

Now is perfect to begin to embed your plan.