Chapter 2: Moving on from you: the colour of Sadness

The war, it turned out, between the resistance and New order would not come to an end anytime soon. In fact it seems like it has just started. It is a moment that resurrects itself far too often, eternally even, the commencement of war.
The order may have the artillery, all kinds of it: Heavy and light . The order may have structure but as good as an advantage that could mean, it made it sluggish .. bureaucratic in most of its approaches.
The resistance on the other hand had nothing but very light arms, very little machinery and very few recruits but it was agile.
Both sides , however, seemed unable to connect to the inhabitants of the torn Galaxy, to gain ground. People were essentially exhausted, tired of war and high moral benchmarks that only ever led to nothing if not to more destruction. They were tired of both repression and disinhibition. They were sick of both order and Chaos so it was hard for both sides to capitalise on them, Leaders of both warring sides realised that.


It has been a year since they last spoke, before their connection was upheld. He is aware of this, he has been aware every second of it. This consciousness, this yearning is what reminds him that he is still Human.
However, he does not attempt to reach out for her, he is resolute in his decision. He is Merciless in his self inflicted torture.
'Last time, though, she came to you, remember. She reached out for you and all you did was humiliate her'
But sometimes, some rare times, he senses her. Fragments of warmth and a myriad of other things, sounds and weary eyes, yet everything revolves around a speckle of loneliness, a muffled note in the sea of sounds. It does not last. It is but an outburst, a flash of lightening that ends as soon as it strikes.
Those are the times his mind conjures up deserts, made of hope, doubts, sand and ice. She takes his hand, holds onto it and they walk the bleak deserts. They cross them together. They reach a place where they are not torn apart, where they don't strive for survival.
But he shakes the thought away as soon as it starts consuming him. There is no room for this now. He chose his path and she chose hers and where hers is an iteration of the past, a longing for an era that led to decadence, the catastrophe that is their world, his .. is forged along new lines, new means. His is realistic in its approach and its tackle.
His is bound to prevail.


Rey learns never to get too attached, never hope or expect. Companionship, attachments never end well in War.
But For some people, it is already too late, she is too involved, too attached and truth is: whenever they lose someone, it hurts her somewhat, it hurts someone and she wonders if it is the same in the order, she wonders if he feels the troopers' pain.
'No, He does not let himself, it will crush him'.
But she reminds herself everyday that they have to fight for the greater good.
They have to fight for the fallen.
And each day, they tally another group.
"Rey ... Rey, is everything alright?"
Poe's voice nudges her out of her trance, startles her a little.

"Nothing"
"You are far too good a liar for a Jedi"
She giggled just a little.
"I was thinking about us"
Poe raised an eyebrow as he smiled. Poe Dameron wasn't above teasing her or Finn or even the uptight stout good for nothing Gen. Hux, anybody for what matters. His eyes, Rey noted, twinkled as he did. In a second, he reverted back to the old Poe, the pilot of the resistance instead of the burdened Vice general he now was.
"I meant the Resistance and our allies" she firmly clarified

"Wouldn't mind it another way, though"
"There is another battle coming on, is not there?"
"We don't decide this, Rey. You know we don't. However, I wouldn't hope so, anytime soon. we barely managed to scrap a few TIE Fighters"
"Look at you, Poe. All those things I heard about you, the daredevil impulsive Poe, you sound nothing like this, right now"
"Yeah, Look at me. Nothing ever stays the same" his eyes, they moved from her face to the distance before them.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Of course not ,Rey. It is just sometimes I want to go back to being old Poe. Sometimes, I feel guilty about Holdo, about Leia. How I used to judge them. Now, that it is me in their shoes, I am becoming more cautious, more like them. Tell me, is it a good or bad thing, Rey?"
"Honestly, I don't know. Sometimes it is good to be cautious. It lowers the toll of destruction. Sometimes, Caution is a disaster, a hindrance in its own right. But Poe, You are doing a great Job. Everybody is"
"Thank you" He smiled again, brightly and without teasing this time and she could not help but smile back at him.
"Rey, I wanted to talk to you about something else."
"Go on"
"It is not about ... the war"
Rey widened her eyes at him expectedly while he resumed "It is about ... us"
"Us?"
"Yes, like you and me. Hanging out, cozying up ... Stuff like this." He was fumbling with words, Rey realised. He was .. unsure of himself, Poe Dameron and honestly it was a scene to behold, it was both comical and endearing and she couldn't help but burst out in laughter.
"Poe Dameron, are you asking me out?"
He lowered his head to the ground, looking every inch dejected and insecure "Look, I know you are supposed to be a Jedi and everything, but you are still in training and I heard the codes have been changed"
Suddenly, it hit her, the gravity of it: Poe wanted to date her, Poe Dameron wanted to date her and she didn't know how to answer, whether she should accept or refuse.
The air has been knocked out of her lungs.
"it has nothing to do with the Jedi code" she managed to blurt

"So?" he looked expectedly

'Oh God, oh God' she mentally panted
"Rey, Do you need time to think it over?" he picked on the hint

"Yes, please"
"Look, if you don't like this, it is fine with me, Rey. You don't have to feel awkward or obliged in this"
"I know, Poe. I know"
"So, I will see around?"
"Yes ... and Poe, thank you, for everything"
"For what? Rey, we are comrades before all. Besides, you are the one holding all this together."


Her thoughts are treacherous.
Rey knows she shouldn't displace Poe's face, Poe's eyes. She knows she shouldn't imagine someone else's eyes in their place and Reality Check: An enemy's in Poe's stead, an enemy who humiliated her and took her for a fool but How can she control something like this?

'You are nothing, Rey' he taunts

'Stupid, Stupid, Rey' she mentally bangs her head.


The loneliness is not satiated, however much it eats from one's soul and honestly, the thoughts that come uninvited , that infest him in the wake of loneliness don't help him either.
'Perhaps this, this connection as twisted and sick as it is, as tainted as you made it through your lies and manipulation was your only chance, your last salvage from the Loneliness that is eating you alive. and perhaps, I was your only chance'


The causalities of their war aren't faceless. He realises with a heavy heart.
Or perhaps, he has known all along.
The momentum of the impact threw him off balance, something scalded him, something heavy fell onto him
She was under attack.
"The girl is Down" Hux bellowed victoriously

'She is alive' He could feel 'She is alive but barely'
His surrounding shifted, their bond has flared to life for all the right or the wrong reasons

"Rey, Hang on" The resistance pilot was shouting over the booms, as he tried to make way for himself among the rubble, beneath the missiles.

"Stop the raids. Fall back" Kylo Ren frantically ordered as Hux looked disbelievingly at him "But sir .."
"Stop it now"
"You are laying everything we have been doing to waste" Hux objected

"I will not repeat myself second time." Kylo Ren sniggered at him
Hux indignantly marched out of the control room muttering something about 'not the way to win a war, wasting a second chance, and weak' but for the time, he couldn't care less.
And for once he found himself bidding her to resist.


Staying in the Medbay was surprisingly nice.
The place was plain, primitive even but at the same time clean, sterile and warm and she could find an excuse to mop around all day with BB-8 by her side. She wasnot above that.
Her idle mood however tensed when she sensed something very subtle trying to sneak up on her, inexistent even

"You don't have to try to cloak yourself every time you want to visit, I can sense you however you hide"
"You are getting better, I see"
"Yes"
Silence stretched between them for moments before she resumed "You have been so lonely"
"And, haven't you?"
"Not as much as you have been, Ben"
"Does it give you satisfaction?"
"It doesn't"
And again, they were at an impasse

"Thank you, for stopping the raid" she found herself saying

"You fall, I fall , matter of fact" There was a hint of pleasantness in his voice, a mere hint "besides, my offer still stands, join me and let's end this once and for all"
He knew he said the wrong thing as she slipped back to defensive mode "You shouldn't be here"
"I missed you" the calm fervor by which he said it took her by surprise

'you are the one holding all this together' she found Poe's voice resonating in her head.
"What? trying to manipulate me a second time?
"You know I was lying"
"Which time exactly? I have lost count, the bounds between what is true and what isn't about you is always blurred, Ben"
He couldn't answer to this

"Ben, I am tired. I am tired of all this and I can't carry your weight along. I can't always be looking out for you, sorting the mess in your soul and I don't know how to bridge the rift inside you or bring the edges back together" She pleaded
"Do you think that I am enjoying this? that I am happy to be torn, broken apart like this?" he lashed out at her "Do you think any of this is easier for me than it is for you? Do you think or perhaps hope that if I join you here this war is going to end? Well, I will let you in on something, this war is perpetual, it is far greater than the both of us"
"So why are always so adamant on me joining you if this war will never end?"
"It is different. I want you to snap out of the past, Rey. We can't keep iterating the past loop and expect different outcomes. I want you to help me break this cycle" "Funny, you do everything the old empire used to do then speak to me about abandoning the past"
"The order isn't the empire"
"This is leading nowhere .. I will never leave my place here and you will never do the same. The ink is dry" She flinched a little bit, this argument has taken a toll on her recovering wounds.

"Look, I shouldn't have started this, Rey. You need to rest. I will take to my leave"

"Ben ... Or Kylo, I am sorry, I really am"

He takes down the walls around his mind and lets her peer through while he does the same, he sees her with her friends, he sees her with the pilot. She is not entirely happy but she is OK.

'Me too'

'Don't come back' he hears her unvoiced request 'I am letting you go'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, don't make this war harder for the both of us. I am finding a way out of this bond.'

'You can't'

'I will'

'So this is the last time, then?'

He on his part doesn't feel angry, can't feel angry at the moment even as he wants to.

What he feels is something different than anger, strikingly different and more profound that he doubts it isn't his, he doubts he isn't himself. It is Melancholy, like no other. Is it emanating from her or from him or maybe from the both of them?

The sadness soaks him, seeps through his bone.

He doesn't know how to handle sadness, Anger he knows well, anger is his best friend whether when it is red hot, burning through his flesh, rigid blue freezing up his soul or white searing through his mind. Loneliness, he learnt to live with that but this ...

The bond is severed and their connection is dimmed. The sadness, it dims out, fades on his side and she now feels a void in its place. From his side, she feels nothing. What remains is her share of blue.


Anger slowly makes its way back to his heart, however it doesn't drive the sadness away this time.

'Anger will not always be on your side'

The sadness perpetuates itself, haunts him in the form of her eyes, in the form of Han's eyes and his mothers'.

Sadness predates on him as much as loneliness and rage do.

"End this" he instructs Hux "End this war"