[ he wonders if he's doing the right thing here. if he's looking for something where there's nothing. this is not a well-thought effort. this is him clawing to find some goodness in kylo ren. somewhere, anywhere. latching on to whatever he saw that could be redeemable.

while he's working on this, everything about his is forgotten. i.e., how his jaw actually hurts a little from being gripped too hard. ]

You don't have to be! Prove me wrong. Prove Rey wrong. You — what do you think you're doing now? You think you're not hurting Leia right now? She wants you to come home.

[ AS ANNOYING AS IT WAS to have to admit that much, he knows it's true. he would do anything for leia, including and not limited to bringing kylo ren back to her. he only found out kylo ren was brianna essentially just now, but … if that was really the source of so much of her sadness, he wanted to try to fix it. maybe he could fix it.

(also, again: maybe he didn't have to get brainwashed.) ]