I know I'm a bit late to be writing oneshots in response to TLJ, but I didn't trust myself to write it properly until I'd seen it multiple times, and since I only managed to see it once in cinema I had to wait until I got hold of a DVD copy.

Either way, this is an introspective piece on my interpretation of Kylo Ren. If you don't agree with it, feel free to tell me why in the reviews - I'm all for discussing characterisation and Star Wars with people - but please respect that this is my opinion. Also, I don't ship Reylo, so there isn't really a romantic focus here.

This is written in second person, and I know that makes some people uncomfortable so if you don't like it, here's your warning not to read it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, or any of the characters.

Let the past die.

Let the past die.

Let the past die let the past die let the past die-

The words are your mantra. They circulate your head, haunt your every waking thought. They have become the only thing that separates you from the fools and sycophants who think they can restore the dubious glory of the Empire - not to mention the suicidal loons who think dying to protect a dead democracy is a new idea or a good one.

The only thing that separates you from her.

Not just her. Him, too. The boy who grew up on stories of a civil war, who played with X-wings made of wood.

And the boy in the mask, too, the boy trying to be his grandfather, looking up to a dead ideal - an ideal who is dead because he couldn't let the past die. He had to save his son.

Let the past die, let the past die. . .

Never mind that it hurts just as much to see her closing the door of that ship on you as it did to see your father doing the same. Never mind that when that wreck of a ship you were taught to love soared over the salt flats, you hated it so much you burned with it.

You couldn't let the past die, and so you missed the opportunity to end the war. To end the reincarnation of the old Rebellion, to end the last dregs of a system which hasn't worked since the fall of the Old Republic, to end. . .

Her.

Not the one who rejected you, tried to kill you. The one who loves you even now, though she has enough sense to know that her son is gone. He - like all old things - is dead. He died on Starkiller Base with his father.

Never mind that the memory of her lovingly brushing your hair out of your face lingers, the memory of soft words and soft hearts and I named you after my only hope, Ben.

You are alone.

You thought you had a chance to not be alone - a chance to have someone understand - but that chance died in Snoke's throne room. Because she believed in you - she held onto past legends like Skywalker and Vader - and she was wrong. You were right - but only partially. She did not turn.

You swore you would end her. Finish the last hope of a dead order with one stroke. But she does not die easily. She grew up on a death planet, and it taught her well.

Nor would you kill her, even if you could. She fascinates you. Her parents were never there for her, as yours weren't for you, but she never held it against them. She had faith.

Stupid, naïve faith, but faith all the same.

The same sort of faith that once saved a galaxy. . .

No! Let the past die. Let the past die.

See you around, kid, your uncle said. I'll always be with you, just like your father.

Your uncle did not come to save your soul.

You don't know if you are hurt that he didn't try - did he not care enough to try? - or proud you have embraced the darkness so fully that even one who saw good in Darth Vader can see none in you.

Your master trained you well. You took his teachings, then rose up to slaughter him. To take his place. But you are not Sith.

You are not a member of an old, inefficient religion.

Let the past die, let the past die, let the past die-

You hate this. You hate that though they are dead, they still haunt you. I'll always be with you.

Just like your father.

He was right. They are everywhere - in your hatred for that piece of junk, in your violent crusade against all things Jedi, in your need to control your own destiny, step out of their shadow.

She never knew shadows. She had no cover to shelter her, no shade with which to hide from the fierce sun. Yet she manages to burn brighter than all of that. It does not define her.

She saw the galaxy at its worst, and still fights to protect it.

You almost start to wonder why you want to destroy it that much.

That trooper friend of hers is a mystery as well. He knew nothing but the glory of the First Order, nothing but what your associates had fed him, whether it was truths or lies. And yet he still chose to take the risk that there was something better than this - a cause that he deemed worth fighting for.

Similar to having a powerful voice in your head from a young age, telling you what you should and shouldn't do, you can't help but think. Except, the trooper didn't have conflicting accounts, like you did from your family and Snoke. He just had the First Order.

How had he broken free?

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because you are no longer that conflicted boy. You know who you are, what you are. What you want. Let the past die.

The past is dead. But it - they - are still here.

Your father is in the contours of your face when you look in the mirror.

Your uncle is in the way you grip your lightsaber, the techniques you use to manipulate the Force.

And your mother is in the boldness of the Resistance's - no, the Rebellion's; if it's the Rebellion it's just another old thing that has to die - moves. In their cleverness, too.

And she is everywhere. She and her stormtrooper friend. In the hallways she once graced with her apparition, in the ranks upon ranks of uniform white. They are everywhere, because they sowed doubt in your heart. Because they made the "right" decision even when faced with worse circumstances than the ones you dealt with.

It doesn't matter. Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. You will kill them, and you will succeed. They will join the ranks of the old things that tried to live long after their time had passed.

But they will still be there. Here. With you. No matter what you do, they will be in your every waking thought, in your dreams. . .

Let the past die, you said. But as someone whose namesake is a ghost, you know full well that dead doesn't mean gone forever.