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demonfeathers

notbecauseofvictories

viperofsand asked:

Headcanons for the Knights of Ren?

notbecauseofvictories answered:

There are always things like them, on the edges of the galaxy. A class below assassin but above animal; crawling beasts without hearts, blood in their teeth. Madmen, monsters—but even monsters have their uses, on occasion.
A man who would be king (and there are always men who would be king, as surely as there are things like them) knows this. The clever ones know what rocks to turn over, how to hunt them down, leash them, gather them together, there in the dark.
They do not need a purpose. It is a common mistake, to assume they are looking for purpose. As though chaos and destruction need a purpose—they are. They exist.
What they need, is an opportunity.
Would-be kings always have their whims—this one wants to give them names, a title. He thinks it’s amusing to call them knights of, these remorseless things who leave nothing but death and misery in their wake. They let him; it is not a priority, what they are called.
Among themselves, they have simpler names—this is ‘Rogue’ and that is ‘Heavy’. Sniper. Monk. Boom. Knife. Bug. Teeth. It is safer that way. To know a thing’s true name is to own it, and they are wilder things than can ever be owned. Not by kings. Not by each other.
(Conjecture: They are individual beings, under the bloodlust and armor. They come from planets, probably. They were born to someone. Some of them might have touched another being’s skin without the intent to break it. Statistically, it is likely.
This is never confirmed. They tell stories of past kills, battles; they spar and mock. But Sniper does not speak at all and Monk never removes the helmet, and they do not trust each other, away from the deaths that unite them.)
Would-be kings have whims, it is known, but when this one brings them a boy—stumbling and coltish, sallow beneath his spots—and tells them to make a thing of him, it is too much. They refuse.
Show them, the Would-be King says, sickly-sweet as a doting parent. The boy goes pale (paler) but nods. Yes, Master, he says, his voice a hoarse whisper.
The boy pulls out a sword of fire and kills Teeth. They watch his bloodless body fall, smoking faintly.
The boy is called Kylo Ren. They call him Boy.
Kylo Ren is special, the Would-be King tells them. He will be their leader.
Boy is a mess, they figure out quickly—shaking and full of nightmares, squeamish about how a body dies, picky about which rations he will eat and where he sleeps. He can work dark miracles, his eyes hollowed out with sickly yellow-red, but he expects someone to wash his sheets, to listen when he talks.
They conclude that Boy must have been loved, once. It is funny to think of it, and also sad. (No one comes to be one of their kind from an overabundance of love.)
Boy likes Sniper best for no discernible reason, even after Sniper punctures his eardrum during sparring—Boy just grins up at her, feral and bright, blood slicked down his neck. He follows her around for a week afterward, his ear wrapped in a bacta cast.
Bug likes Boy best, shows him how to construct his own weapons and where to apply pressure to bruise the liver, choke a man out slowly or quickly. (Bug tells Boy stories, quiet-like. No names, not ever, but Boy guesses which system Bug is talking about. He says, would you ever go back— there’s no ‘back’ Bug says. not for things like us.
They settle into a routine—Boy has orders from the Would-be King, concocts a battle plan which they gamely listen to. Rogue then informs them of what the plan actually is. Boy makes faces until Heavy bundles him into the ship. They kill things. (Boy is good at killing things, they grudgingly admit. Boy is a prodigy at killing things.) There is drinking and non-rationed food after. If Boy was particularly proud of his plan, he will sulk in his quarters until he realizes he cannot eat pride, before joining them.
Repeat, as necessary.
(Side note? Boy is a sad drunk, he curls into a tight ball and cries silently on the floor all night, is sick until morning. They do not let Boy drink anymore, after that.)
The day Boy actually comes up with a half-decent battle plan, Rogue blinks at him, head cocked. All right, Rogue says. But it better work.
It does. Boy is insufferable about it for weeks afterward.
It is not one of Boy’s plans that gets Bug killed, but it is Boy who screams across the battlefield, an unearthly sound that his mask cannot contort or dampen. Even they flinch at the sound of it.
They will argue later what happened first, whether every body not clad in black armor (all but one) dropped to the ground or Boy tossed away his lightsaber or the air turned to fire, but they all agree—Boy is the one who stalks across a field of the dead towards the man who killed Bug, crackling like a passing electrical storm.
“Don’t worry,” Boy says to the man, and even through the crackle of the modulator, his voice is soft, a boy’s voice. “I won’t hurt you.”
The man is limp, wide-eyed and trusting as a bantha, as Boy takes him by the throat. He only makes a noise when his spine crunches, and suddenly his head is lolling at a wrong angle. “Shh,” Boy says, to the whimpering man. It sounds like he is smiling. “Shh It’s almost over.”
He breaks the man’s sternum next.
Rogue cannot watch, past that point. Heavy is muttering something in a strange tongue; it might be a prayer. No one else speaks, no one will breathe a word, not until Boy exhales in a rush of modulator static, and drops the man in a broken heap at his feet.
Then, without any ceremony or fanfare, Boy crumples to the ground.
(Monk is the only one who will touch him, after, and so he is given the dubious honor of carrying him back to the transport. Boy’s legs nearly drag to the ground.)
They leave as quickly as hyperspace will carry them. The ship is silent as a tomb.
They stop calling him Boy, after that.

#Star Wars