Chapter 4
The war between us: Yielding to you
There is a storm within that is not dying soon. It keeps on raging. It is Precarious, haphazard and dangerous, Finn senses. The scariest part, its core is one of their own.
The intensity of battles, the range of strikes have increased beyond logical, beyond comprehensible.
The order on one side, the resistance on the other, Rey strikes just as hard, Rey has become used to collateral damage. What was normal for Hux is becoming normal for Rey and it isn't a good sign, not in the least. It is losing them: supporters, supplies and ground.
Finn may not be as strong in the force as Rey or Ren but he can still probe and it gives him something in turn.
Rey is not fine.
But Ren ... he is changing.
Whatever comes out of Ren is a hue of calm deep blue, vastly different from Rey's. Rey's Aura is an electric blue, haywire and it is ready to ignite anything that stands its way, the once hopeful spark in her had turned into something eerie, almost mad.
Yet, what they continue to share is something deep, deep and complex , like dark matter. It binds them, Finn realises. It scatters them, aligns them, never to be seen, never to separate them or let them go.
Ren and Rey are tired of hoping, withered by guilt: Han, Poe .. a galaxy they pulled further apart instead of stitching it back together and other anonymous things between them, loose, tainted and unresolved.
'Oh Rey, where are you heading to?' Finn mused
He searches for her beneath the rubble of the past, beneath layers of sand. Something has died in Rey even if she claims not, even if she doesnot swap sides.
Rey's ploy is more dangerous, she is aiming for a paradigm shift, turning the resistance into the former empire and as peculiar as it might seem, as much hatred he harbours for the republic, he isnot a fanboy of the empire either.
'A new order' that is what he has always wanted.
He knows the resistance is not as strong as it used to be under Leia and Poe's reign, there is disorder in their lines as much as in his with the constant tug of war between him and Hux, it is reflected in their faltering strategies, their chaotic raids and the streams of blood that do not stop.
The sane part of his mind knows it can not go on like this, it cannot and it is brewing something .. only if it works.
Only if the resistance is receptive.
When Finn receives the communication from Kylo Ren, all hell breaks loose.
Rey is furious to say the least, she is even adamant against listening to the delegated messenger and Finn knows it is time to knock some common sense in her.
"Are you out of your mind?"
"Rey, things can not be taken the way you do, not now, not anymore"
"You actually want to sit down with them, after all this, after all what they had done .."
"Listen Rey, every party is as guilty in this as the other, let me remind you the last few years, we weren't any better than Hux"
"They forced us to retaliate this way"
"Now, they arenot. I can sense it, Rey. They aren't trying to buy time, they aren't manuovering. Kylo Ren wants to end this and not the way Hux wants"
"Are you willing to give up on all those we had lost, Poe .. Jessika and everyone just like this? Are you willing to lose to him?"
"I don't want to lose other people to this war"
"I am not giving up on this, on the resistance, its vision and all those who had died, Finn. I am not"
"Are you sure it is all about the resistance?"
"What are you hinting at?"
"Rey, are you sure this isnot about you? are you sure it isn't personal? Let me remind you , you were Ren's most vocal sympathiser. You had compassion for him. What happened Rey? Is it about Ren Or Do you feel guilty about Poe, Perhaps?"
Rey was taken aback by his jab. Her face, it turned a dangerous hue of red.
"Rey, this is not a monopoly between the both of you, this is not a fight for revenge"
but before he could continue, Rey's hand landed on his face as she spit back "Weak, you have always been weak"
"Whatever you think. Here are the facts: Ren is what stands between the galaxy and the bloodthirsty Hux. Sitting down with him is what the majority of resistance deems right, so we are negotiating with the Order. Accept this , Rey." Finn said with finality.
Her signature that night was searing, Rey was here to fight, Rey was here to scar.
"Today, Finn said the most absurd of things"
She sounded like a drunk would to him , and perhaps she was. However she was, Ben knew he would have to play along with her, level with her until she gets whatever it is out of her system.
"What did he say?"
"He said you want to end the war .. he said I was your biggest sympathiser, was I?"
"Maybe , in the past"
"And we should let the past die, right? Kill it if we have to?
"Yes"
"Like you killed Han, Like you killed Poe"
"You think I killed Poe on purpose?!"
"You think?" she wryly replied. Ren noted how things have changed between them. She doesn't blow up the way she used to, This Rey maintains a calm façade all along. Her emotions are bottled up, no longer does she carry them on her sleeve.
"This is not about you, Rey or Me. The pilot" he stresses "was a casualty of war, like any other. He was of strategic importance, none the less as your leader and general"
"I will never forgive Luke for having hesitated that night" she lamented, voice dripping with phoney sweetness "Imagine, How many lives we could have spared if you were gone"
She knocked the air out of his lungs by those mere words.
Everything stood still between them abruptly. A void stood between them, transcending time. He couldn't retaliate. He could not find anything to throw back at her and she revelled this.
"I can't believe how the tables turned, Ren. Look who is taunting whom"
"Does it make you happy, all this? Tell me, Rey. Will it bring them back?" he carried on speaking "and again, let me tell you this: even if I didn't exist, this war wouldn't have stopped, It existed before me and others will ensue after it, if not in this era, then in another, only the faces would have changed."
"There is no face as cruel as yours"
"Your naivety stuns me still, Rey. Do you know what Snoke was capable of doing? what Hux is capable of ? Do you know how many a battle I have waged against him, how many I will to pass on this truce, these negotiations? You have no Idea"
"It doesn't matter, you always have your way with everything"
"Not everything, I never had my way with you" he smiled
"Well, you said you will break me, and here we are. Congratulations, Everything I have fought for, everything that I have ever loved, everything is going along your way"
"You know, I never meant it in the past. Believe it or not, I never wanted it."
"The damage is already done"
"Rey, wherever ground you put, wherever ground I put will never be home for us, whatever state or regiment established will not be for us. We are outcasts. we are lost. Nothing is left for us. Not anymore. At least join me, not to find answers nor to find hope or home or even each other, just to end this, only to end it. Please"
She didn't answer, she simply broke the connection and blocked him. He couldn't guess what she was thinking, if she could see the rationale or sincerity in his words.
'I hope you understand soon enough ... one day'
The negotiations were running surprisingly with ease and an entente seemed to be in foresight between both the Order and the resistance yet during which two major shifts had occurred in lines of both parties.
Hux defected from the order.
And Rey dissented from the resistance.
