Chapter 6: I Have Hate

Full-bore, uncontrolled panic.

That was what consumed Ben as he ran through the jungle trees of Ajan Kloss. The Force Bond, the Dyad, was howling in protest like a wounded animal, and amidst this cacophony, he only briefly wondered how the power of teleportation - among other gifts - was still in effect if the Bond with his beloved was now torn asunder by her passing. Had his soul not been in such torment, Ben - ever the Force scholar - probably would have studied this logical discrepancy further. Then again, he had not been made aware that something was not quite right with his uncle on Crait - chiefly, the fact that he was wielding a lightsaber that had been ripped in two from halfway across the galaxy only hours earlier - until it was too late.

And so Ben kept crashing through the jungle trees of a planet half a universe away from the safety of his castle on Mustafar. The night was still, breaks in the jungle canopy allowing him views of the stars twinkling peacefully above, but in his grief, Ben paid the silence little heed and even sought to shatter it.

"POE! POE DAMERON!" Ben bellowed through the underbrush. "POE! Come on, get me too, Poe! I'm right here! I'm ready!" He staggered in exhaustion against a tree, the tears spilling like a river down his cheeks. "Please..." he croaked. "Please, Poe... I don't know what else to do..."

Ben had wished for death before. Sometimes in the darkest moments of misery within the Dark Side, he had even wished that he had never been born at all. But suicidal thoughts incited by self-pity paled in comparison to actively seeking death, wishing for it, because he had nothing else to live for. No one to live for after only having that responsibility for the first time in his life, in the form of his beloved, his wife of but a matter of days. Rey...

"Ben? Ben, what are you doing?!" Ben wheeled around to see the moonlight casting on a round, tan face. Rose. But even the technician's loveliness could not help him now.

"Get out of here!" he moaned, waving her away. "POE! Kriffing DAMN YOU!"

Rose's deep, hazel eyes were illuminated in fear, disturbed. "Ben, you don't understand, Rey is..."

"Didn't you hear me? GO! Get away from me!" Ben actually grabbed her and shook her, nearly lifting Rose's petite, plump body off the ground. Now deeply frightened, Rose stumbled away, pelting through the thicket. Ben took off in the opposite direction, eventually emerging on the edge of a clearing.

"POE!"

"Ben!"

He knew that voice. Sweet Force above, he knew that voice. Had heard its music amidst the sheets while making love. Turning about 15 degrees to his left, Ben saw a figure bathed in moonlight on the opposite end of the clearing. Was he dead, having gotten his wish and he just didn't even feel it? Was this the Force playing tricks on him by sending deluded visions? Was she a ghost? Had it really come to that?

"Rey..." he whimpered out through a dazed breath. The moonlight caught her beaming smile of relief. The same one he had seen whenever he had kissed her, or cum deep inside her. No Force vision could replicate that, nor the sparkle in her eyes as she whispered his name on her lips. "Ben..."

Her arms were outstretched wide and he made to run into them, overjoyed. "REY!"

BANG!

Unseen by either of the lovers, a third figure came careening out of the darkened shadows. A flash of red and then it was gone. A spasm of pain shot up Ben's spine when he was nearly in Rey's arms. The last step or two into her embrace were not quite a stumble, his inertia seemed to slow as he reached her, hugging her tightly.

Then his legs gave out. His wife was remarkably strong as she beared his weight, even while her face collapsed into something stricken, as she lowered him to the jungle earth.

Ben's face was remarkably placid for someone who was fading, a strange and peaceful disbelief lingering on his expression. "I... I thought it would be enough," he breathed, as his body trembled in Rey's arms, where she cradled him in her lap.

Tears dripping onto his upturned face like sweet rain, Rey began to haltingly sing to her dying husband: "Somewhere... out there... there's a place for us... Somewhere a place for us... somehow... someday... some..."

The songs she had heard while nestled in bed with him were starting to run together, her voice trailing off weakly as Ben curled into her side and lay hauntingly still.

Crashes could be heard through the vegetation as much of the Resistance burst into the clearing. Huddled against Finn, Rose had a horrified hand clapped to her mouth. At the head of them all stood Poe, a blaster - still smoking - hanging limply at his side, staring at what he had just done. The General seemed to not quite believe that he had done it. Brought down the mighty Kylo Ren with one blaster bolt to the back. Lifting her tear-stained face as Poe drifted towards them, the Jedi's luminous brown eyes shifted to shades of slate once she spied the weapon in his hand.

"Stay back."

Poe halted in his approach. Turning back to her fallen husband with love in her eyes, Rey closed his lids, dipped her head and kissed his mouth in full view of everyone. Rising slowly to her feet, her features stupefied with shock, she approached Poe herself. Wordlessly, she held out her beckoning hand, palm up.

Astonishingly, Poe actually handed the gun to her. Rey turned it over in her palm, her disturbingly calm face belying a deathly malice as, with a voice far too flat and soft and tranquil, she asked:

"How do you fire this blaster, Poe?"

The pilot was too stunned to form an answer, but Rey didn't wait for one. "Do you just... pull this little trigger?!" And with that the ferocity burst into her voice and her movements as she stuck the muzzle of the blaster into Poe's face, nearly up his nose. Now, Rey's eyes were wild as she began to windmill the barrel of the blaster from person to person in the circle that had formed - except, tellingly, at Rose and Finn.

"How many blaster bolts are left, Poe? How many?" She looked quite deranged. "Enough for you? You?! You?!" She pointed the blaster at Resistance members, seemingly at random, ignoring the shouts of fear that went up, pleas for her to stop. "ALL of you! You all killed him! How many bolts are there left, Poe? How many can I kill, and still have one blaster bolt left for me?" She stared Poe down as she advanced on him, finger on the trigger, taking deadly aim at the pilot. "Murderer! You killed him with your hate! Well... I can kill too - because now I have hate!"

The barrel of the blaster wobbled a little as Rey aimed it at her commanding officer. No one moved to intervene.

Then...

With a strangled cry, Rey cast the blaster aside into the woods. Falling to her knees, she sobbed. Tentatively, Poe reached out a hand.

"Rey..."

"Don't touch me. And don't you dare touch him!"

"Rey..."

"I said DON'T TOUCH HIM!" Rey screamed. And her fingers gnarled tight as blue lightning suddenly crackled out of them, hitting Poe full-on and enveloping him, lifting him off the ground. The rest of the Resistance could only stand in horrified amazement as Poe's screams echoed through the clearing. As Rey electrocuted him. The Jedi's face was twisted in a potent mix of pain and sadistic pleasure as she took her revenge.

Finally, after two or three agonizing minutes, the blue lightning disappeared and Poe's body dropped sickeningly to the ground. Clothes were ripped, his still form smoking and sparking.

Finn was the first to move. "Get the General to the med ward NOW!"

One group of soldiers descended on the fallen General, while a second swarmed around Rey. Thrashing and screaming, they had to pick her up to carry her off to her room.

"Don't harm her!" Finn ordered after the comrades subduing his friend. Seeing Poe's body hefted towards the med ward, Finn spun back to Rose, terror in his eyes. "Rosie..."

She simply nodded, murmuring gently. "Go."

Kissing her quickly, Finn sprinted away, leaving his girlfriend alone with Ben's body. Quietly, sadly, Rose placed a cloth over Ben, and began to prepare him for burial...