"Mind control serum. Of all the treacherous..." Ben breathes in heavily. "I was a space tyrant, and did a lot of terrible things that come with that territory. And while I was groomed for that role - I lived most of my life with a very powerful dark wizard in my head, who stoked all my worst qualities - I made my own bad choices, so I don't have the excuse of mind control. I hate who I was and what I did...but it can't be undone."
He bows his head a little. Ben isn't proud of who he was as Kylo Ren, but he owes Jill the truth as she told him hers. Kylo is still part of him, his history and experiences, and his actions are Ben's. But he sympathizes with her situation. The idea of being under someone's total control like that, someone who's a hated enemy at that, is incredibly disturbing.
"It was an old enemy of my family, and he enjoyed watching us tear ourselves apart. He chose me as his tool to help him do it. I turned against him and fought to stop him, but too late and after a lot of damage had been done. My friend...she helped me realize that I was on the wrong path. She was badly wounded. I died to make sure she made it home safely, and I woke up here."
Snoke used more subtle methods than that for leading Ben under his sway, but Ben suspects that if it hadn't been for his and Palpatine's influence he would have grown up all right. But the voices had been there since he was a baby, too young to understand what they were saying to him, manifesting as bad dreams and night terrors. And when he was older they set to work twisting him into a weapon against his own family. So he'll never know what he would have been like if he'd grown up free of them.
Still, he finds Nexus politics easier to talk about.
"There aren't hard and fast lines, but if you see territory marked by blue banners, that's controlled by the Eliksni of House Winter. They have had a harsh history that has left them territorial and distrusting of strangers. I sympathize, given my own history with abandonment and anger - but that wouldn't do me any favors with them. The field isn't infallible, and people have found ways around it before. So I don't completely trust it, though it's saved me in the past."
no subject
He bows his head a little. Ben isn't proud of who he was as Kylo Ren, but he owes Jill the truth as she told him hers. Kylo is still part of him, his history and experiences, and his actions are Ben's. But he sympathizes with her situation. The idea of being under someone's total control like that, someone who's a hated enemy at that, is incredibly disturbing.
"It was an old enemy of my family, and he enjoyed watching us tear ourselves apart. He chose me as his tool to help him do it. I turned against him and fought to stop him, but too late and after a lot of damage had been done. My friend...she helped me realize that I was on the wrong path. She was badly wounded. I died to make sure she made it home safely, and I woke up here."
Snoke used more subtle methods than that for leading Ben under his sway, but Ben suspects that if it hadn't been for his and Palpatine's influence he would have grown up all right. But the voices had been there since he was a baby, too young to understand what they were saying to him, manifesting as bad dreams and night terrors. And when he was older they set to work twisting him into a weapon against his own family. So he'll never know what he would have been like if he'd grown up free of them.
Still, he finds Nexus politics easier to talk about.
"There aren't hard and fast lines, but if you see territory marked by blue banners, that's controlled by the Eliksni of House Winter. They have had a harsh history that has left them territorial and distrusting of strangers. I sympathize, given my own history with abandonment and anger - but that wouldn't do me any favors with them. The field isn't infallible, and people have found ways around it before. So I don't completely trust it, though it's saved me in the past."