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Kylo is thirteen the first time he has the dream.
The man is dressed all in white with hair red like a dying sun and there is a thin golden crown on his brow. He's seated on a throne and Kylo — much older and harder, but he can tell it's him — is kneeling beside him, dressed all in black. He can tell the man is important, both to him and in general. There is an air of celebration, of conquest, and for the first time he can remember, Kylo can't feel Snoke lurking somewhere just in the background of his mind.
When he wakes in the morning to the sounds of the Jedi Academy, he dismisses it as ridiculous. He doesn't think about it again for a long time.
⁂
He's twenty the next time he has the dream. It’s the same as the last time, but now Kylo can feel the yearning. He knows his older self yearns for this man on the throne, would do anything and everything for him.
It is a disturbing thought, to be so enthralled with someone. When he wakes, he hopes, irrationally panicked, that Snoke cannot see his dreams. He doesn't know why, but somehow they feel like they should be kept secret, like there is some sort of betrayal hidden within them. He tries very hard to forget them.
⁂
He's twenty five the next time he has the dream, and even as he looks at the figure on the throne, he has to admit to himself that these are perhaps not just dreams. They feel too real, like he might be able to reach out and touch the man he sees. Like the yearning really does fill his chest.
When he wakes up, he pushes thoughts of the dreams — or whatever strange thing they are — away. He's already late in preparing to meet Snoke’s new pet general.
⁂
He's twenty six and he knows now that the man is Hux, general of the First Order.
He doesn't know why he had the dreams or what they were. It burns within him, this not knowing. He can’t help but look at Hux whenever he can, glad for the helmet that hides his gaze. Perhaps he has been looking too much, because that longing is taking up residence in him, slow and aching. He pretends it’s all just part of another dream.
⁂
He’s twenty nine and Snoke is dead and he hasn’t had the dream since he met Hux.
He still doesn’t have the answers to his questions about the dreams, but he’s stopped wondering. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Hux is set to take Snoke’s place as Supreme Leader, the place Kylo saw him in all those years ago, before he knew anything else of what would happen. What matters is that Kylo yearns for Hux with a passion hotter than fire. What matters is that now he knows Hux yearns for him in return, ice cold but no less strong for the mask he puts before his feelings.
Kylo is twenty nine and he doesn’t think he will ever have the dream again, because that dream from so long ago has become reality. A prophecy finally fulfilled.