The plush toy in General Leia Organa’s hands is so raggedy Kylo doesn’t recognize it at first. It’s missing a beady eye and both ears are torn, the tips looking ready to fall off.
Only after he puts together that the dirty grayish bits were once yellow and the bleached lavender a deep purple does he realize what it is: a plush tooka. His childhood toy.
An interesting gift for a prisoner of war.
Kylo is sitting down on the edge of his cot when she lets down the electron wall. He stands, reminding them both that he isn’t a child anymore, standing head and shoulders over her.
She extends the hand holding the tooka to him.
“Fine,” she says when he doesn’t take it, then proceeds to drop it on the ground at his feet.
Had it been anything else, Kylo would have considered stepping on it.
The general shakes her head. “Guess I only have myself to blame for your stubbornness.”
“You and Han Solo,” Kylo grinds out in a low voice.
It’s a cheap shot. He bites the inside of his cheek and tells himself that he should be savoring the look of pain on Leia’s face. Even if he did enjoy making her hurt, she quickly covers it a thick layer of anger.
“He loved you, you know. Even then.”
Her words cut his vocal chords to pieces. Kylo bows his head, unable to meet the molten metal in her gaze.
It’s impossible not to think of her as what she is, now: his mother, admonishing him for making a mistake. If only his mistakes were something as minor as the roughhousing or stolen sweets from when he was young.
She leaves him, then, to do nothing but stare at the dingy toy at his feet.
Kylo waits until he can’t hear her footsteps anymore, then waits a little longer after that. Then he picks the tooka up and presses it to his face.
Beneath the must and dust, the tooka smells familiar. Like home.
Something too bitter to be nostalgia washes over him.
Kylo lays on the cot facing the wall and discovers his legs are too long to fit. So he crushes himself into a ball. It’s all the better to hide the shabby little tooka doll he has hugged to his chest.
dispatches from the dumpster 