A Fine Line

Confliction

"Why?" Kylo Ren asked. "Why resist it when it calls to you?"

Dalia inhaled slowly, praying to Bogan for the willpower to make it through this conversation. "The calls of the Dark Side are false promises." Dalia said. "The Dark will whisper in your ear and promise you the thing you want most. Out of desperation, you'll do what it tells you to and then when you've destroyed everything else trying to get that one thing, you'll realize the Dark Side has been lying to you all along and you will never have that thing you wanted. The Light never lies. Sometimes the truth is ugly but I'd rather face the harshness of reality than live a lie."

Dalia shut her mouth, wishing she hadn't said all that. There was something about him that just made it so hard to control herself.

Kylo Ren made no reply and Dalia sat back in her seat, staring blankly at the driver's cabin ahead of them. She tried to calm herself but it was so hard when he was next to her. Dalia started to grind her teeth when for the first time, she felt it. It was so powerful, Dalia couldn't believe she hadn't felt it before. He was conflicted. Deeply, painfully, horrible conflicted. It was tearing him apart inside and for the first time since they'd met, Dalia felt a flicker of pity for him. She knew how it felt to be conflicted. She'd gone through it herself. The transition from Dark to Light or from Light to Dark was painful. It was life-altering and terrifying.

Dalia turned her head slowly, suddenly feeling as if she was seeing him for the first time. This father-killing, Jedi-murdering, war criminal was perhaps not quite as certain of his path as she had assumed. The things he'd done, they horrified her. They were crimes beyond anything her mother had ever committed and that was saying something. But in the shuttle, up close, he didn't look like a murderer. His eyes were tinged with red with dark bags underneath, presumably from lack of sleep, and his expression was...haunted. There was no other way to describe it.

Feeling her gaze, Kylo Ren turned to meet her eyes. They stared at each other for a moment and then the shuttle stopped and Dalia looked away. They exited the shuttle in silence and Dalia swallowed the question she had been going to ask him. It didn't matter, anyway. Not really.

The Dark Side padawans stood in a row against the back wall, their eyes following Kylo Ren as he walked to the center of the room. He heard Dalia take a seat behind him, her Light almost entirely eclipsed in the overwhelming Darkness of the room.

"This is an assessment of your abilities." Kylo Ren said, addressing the padawans. "You will face each other in pairs. Break off into groups of two now."

The padawans did as he instructed, all breaking off into groups of two, leaving one student, a young boy, all alone. He didn't look older than twelve, small and skinny. Bruises and cuts filled his face; most likely inflicted upon him by one of his Masters.

"I'll go with him." Dalia said, coming up behind him quietly.

Kylo Ren nodded and she walked over to the boy, speaking quietly to him in Atoan. Kylo Ren wrenched his eyes away from them, looking around at the group as a whole. "Begin." He said, simply.

In a matter of seconds, the room was ablaze with two dozen red blades of light. Kylo Ren walked between the pairs, examining each student in turn. Some were exceptional; others were terrible. Still others were somewhere in between. There were children among the group, some too young to be sent to war. Snoke would permit it, but Kylo Ren didn't want an army of child soldiers.

Kylo Ren stopped in front of Dalia and the boy, watching the clash of blue against red. She was going easy on him, Kylo Ren could tell. She was so unchallenged she even managed to meet his eyes momentarily, even as the boy in front of her tried desperately to one-up her. Kylo Ren could feel his mounting frustration at not being able to beat her. The boy's temper was like an inferno, almost as unstable as his own. He became increasingly desperate, his attacks becoming more and more sloppy, even as the Darkness around him tightened its grip. If he'd been fighting anyone in the room but Dalia, he would have already lost by now. He was pathetic.