Caf might have been a good start, but it was quickly beginning to taste like dirt in his mouth. Meditation had never really been a strong point of his, not in his youth and not as an adult, but he tried to blank his mind. Rid yourself of anything that isn't useful to you. Usually the only thing left then was anger. At Luke, his parents, the whole galaxy, and the conviction that he would burn them all.
When his mind is cleared, he finds it's not anger left there -- at least not only anger, seeming small and bruised and a poor imitation of itself. And what else is there? Guilt. He knows guilt well enough. Something else, too, in particular respect to the Scavenger -- Rey -- something he's not prepared to untangle just now. But if he ever wants to, he has to set that foundation now. You can't control how others will react to you, Ben. Only yourself, his mother had told him just the day before -- or maybe the day before that, with as little sleep as he is getting it's difficult to remember.
But if he ever wanted her to regard him with anything but suspicion and anger, he would have to be the first. May as well get used to making apologies and having them thrown aside. "I... am sorry about the interrogation," he said finally. "I did plenty to regret as part of the First Order and it's... for complicated reasons that felt justified at the time." Enumerating them would show her too much of himself, the parts that were always too angry and too uncontrollable and too powerful and just too much for everyone he'd ever loved.
"I don't expect any forgiveness, I just... wanted to apologize," he finished lamely, staring into his half empty mug of caf for lack of anywhere else to look.
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When his mind is cleared, he finds it's not anger left there -- at least not only anger, seeming small and bruised and a poor imitation of itself. And what else is there? Guilt. He knows guilt well enough. Something else, too, in particular respect to the Scavenger -- Rey -- something he's not prepared to untangle just now. But if he ever wants to, he has to set that foundation now. You can't control how others will react to you, Ben. Only yourself, his mother had told him just the day before -- or maybe the day before that, with as little sleep as he is getting it's difficult to remember.
But if he ever wanted her to regard him with anything but suspicion and anger, he would have to be the first. May as well get used to making apologies and having them thrown aside. "I... am sorry about the interrogation," he said finally. "I did plenty to regret as part of the First Order and it's... for complicated reasons that felt justified at the time." Enumerating them would show her too much of himself, the parts that were always too angry and too uncontrollable and too powerful and just too much for everyone he'd ever loved.
"I don't expect any forgiveness, I just... wanted to apologize," he finished lamely, staring into his half empty mug of caf for lack of anywhere else to look.