It happened the second the mask came off.

The colors.

Kylo Ren's whole world shifted in the literal blink of an eye, and he felt dizzy from it.

It was so sudden, so jarring, that for a moment, Kylo could only stare are Rey, taking in this newfound perception. She was bound to the interrogation chair in the center of the chamber. Her features, frightened yet angry, were suddenly fleshed out in a new dimension, and Kylo realized this is not how he imagined colors looking. When his parents spoke about colors, they described them as lush and warm and pleasant. The colors Kylo saw were sharp and cold and frightening.

What scared him more than unexpected change in perception was the second thought that passed through his head: the simple truth of the universe that you only saw colors from looking at your soul mate.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think about anything but the colors and the scared girl in front of him—not just any girl, he realized, his soulmate. A nobody, a scavenger from Jakku was his soul mate. It took one clear look at Rey for the colors to appear.

Colors were for Jedi. Colors were for the weak.

This couldn't happen, especially not there and not with her. Kylo cleared his mind as best he could (he tried, but everywhere he looked he saw color), and returned to the interrogation.

x

Kylo stormed down the halls, flanked by Stormtroopers, his mind racing and bizarre, yet he couldn't stop looking at everything in front of him, drinking it all in, trying to remember how it all looked before, when there was only black and white and gray, but finding that everything he looked at in color replaced the prior image. The Stormtroopers, at least, looked the same as he always remembered.

He had screamed at Snoke, all the while blocking out the thought running through his mind: soul mate soul mate soul mate. The Supreme leader couldn't know, under no circumstance could he learn that Kylo—who begged the Dark side to take him, who removed every trace of Ben Solo, who was to be a true Sith—could see in color over some Jedi girl.

He hated her. He hated his soul mate.

When he returned to her cell, she was gone. Fire shot through Kylo's veins. His lightsaber roared to life, and as he destroyed the room, he realized that he finally saw the color of his lightsaber. Even as he hacked the chair to pieces, as he cut through the metal walls, as he screamed in rage, he understood what the color red looked like.

The world was black and white again, with the only colors being the glow of lightsabers (one red, one a color that Kylo wanted to call blue) that clashed between them. Rey could fight. She could fight better than so many others who had taken on Kylo —warriors, legends—though she had never dueled a day in her life. She had no technique, she had no plan, but she had skill, she had luck, she had determination. The red of Kylo's lightsaber was reflected in her eyes as her back dangled over the precipice. Heat licked its way up from the ground below, and Kylo felt his own face burn a bit.

"You need a teacher!" he yelled. When she closed her eyes, when she considered his offer, colors that he didn't yet know danced across her face and he was in awe that he could actually see them, all because of her. And then she turned and fought him again, fighting with all of her strength and will, and he fought back like he had never done before. Soul mate or not, she was the enemy. She had turned her back on the dark side, on his offer.

Rey cut his face and left Kylo bleeding in the snow as the ground opened between them. For a moment he thought of the symbolism, but then he watched her run further into the forest, and he heard the sounds of a ship coming to retrieve him, and his vision began to fade to black, sucking the colors away from his world again.

Good, he thought, take them away. He didn't want the colors, he didn't want this soulmate shit, and he didn't want her.

Before he passed out, Kylo Ren hoped that when he would open his eyes again, the world would look as it did when he had awoken that morning.

x

The infirmary room on the command ship was stark white while black paneling, and when Kylo peeled an eye open, he had a moment of hoping that the whole world would look like this, though at that same moment he knew that it wouldn't. He didn't need to jog his mind about what had happened, everything that had happened before passing out shone clearly at the front of his mind.

The interrogation. The escape. The duel.

The colors.

Rey.

The wound on his face was being treated, evident by the thick bandage coving his nose and eye and the slight burn signaling that the wound was working to close. It would scar, he knew, and he hoped it was a particularly gruesome one. Kylo had never looked very intimidating beneath his mask, and perhaps the scar could change that.

His mask. The damned mask was the whole reason he was in this soul mate predicament. If he hadn't listened to the girl, if he had kept it on—he hadn't tried to make her comfortable—then he would have never seen her properly and he would have never had the colors appear. It was all because of his foolishness. It was his fault.

His anger burst then, and he growled and ripped the bandage off of his face, causing the medical droid that idled in the corner to spring to life and rush to his bedside. The droid had some color to it—that same color he had seen in his family's lightsaber—and he lashed out at the thought of color. Kylo pushed the droid into the wall with an outstretched hand, breaking it to pieces in his anger. He strode across the small room and snatched his cloak from a hook on the wall, wrapping himself tightly as he entered the hallway.

Everyone seemed to be rushing throughout the halls. Stormtroopers marched at a rate faster than normal, and soldiers were flat out running as the barked orders into ear pieces. People noticed Kylo, though, and perhaps it was due to the wound on his face or maybe because his anger was taking up space around him the force that everyone he passed stared at him. He tried to fix his eyes ahead, staring at the black doors of the corridor as he made his way to the control room, but even that couldn't stop him from noticing the way soldiers had different hair colors. As hard as he tried to shut his mind out of the colors, to use the Force to will them away, the colors were still there, still mocking him.

Soul mate, soul mate everything seemed to whisper at him. Kylo growled and forced his way into the control room.

Hux was immediately beside him. Kylo couldn't help but notice that his hair was an incredibly vibrant color against his white skin—skin so pale that he looked close to the same as Kylo remembered from before. The color seemed close to red, which seemed to be the most popular color on the ship aside from black and white.

"You're up and about rather quickly," Hux said, raising an eyebrow. It was plain that he was staring at the scar along Kylo's face, and it occurred to him then that he hadn't even seen what he looked like. He decided to take the constant staring as a sign that the scar healed just as he'd hoped.

"Where are we going?" Kylo asked, pushing past Hux and moving to the windows. The ship was going at light speed.

"Naboo. Snoke wants me to bring you to the central base so you can finish your training," Hux said. "It was his final order." Kylo nodded once, keeping his features neutral. He didn't know where his mask was, and until he found it, he would have to keep his facial expressions to a minimum.

The words struck him in the chest. Finally, finally, his training would be done. He could finally be a Sith lord. He could finally know every secret and trick that his grandfather knew. Kylo Ren would finally get the power that had been promised to him all of those years ago when he had joined the Supreme Leader. After so many defeats and humiliations, this news was the best thing he could have heard.

"What happened during your duel?" Hux said, attempting a casual tone that poorly disguised his curiosity. Kylo considered not telling him anything for a moment, then he thought about lying and saying that the wound was from his own hilt as he defended his face. The truth someone called to him, though, and Hux knew what she was capable of, so it wouldn't be an embarrassment.

"She got in a lucky shot," Kylo said. "She's untrained, but powerful. When we fight next, she won't be as lucky." Hux nodded, not saying anything for a moment. Kylo knew that the next time they fought, she wouldn't be lucky—she would be good. She'd be trained and strong, and she would be his match.

Match match match. The word hung in his mind, the mental connection to the words 'soul mate' obvious, and that anger that ran through Kylo's veins earlier faintly returned.

He would beat her, he would win, he would kill this girl and return his world to black and white.

"I think," Hux said, "that you shouldn't mention her 'lucky shot' to Snoke."

"No, he'll know when he sees me. There's no way around it," Kylo said, allowing a note of annoyance into his voice. "But he knows she's strong with the Force. My punishment won't be as severe."

"For your sake, I hope so," Hux said, and he briskly walked away to give orders about landing. Kylo turned on his heel and left the control room, making his way to his cabins. Though he had just walked down the same hallway minutes before, the colors he saw now hurt his eyes. How could people see so many of them every day? No, it was infuriating.

His cabin was dark, cold, and colorless. Kylo threw his cloak off and marched across the room, opening the door to an adjoining room. Inside of it was only one seat and a pedestal, and on the pedestal sat the helmet of Darth Vader. Usually Kylo would sit when he wanted to speak with his grandfather, but this time he threw himself onto his knees before the relic.

"She's done something to me, Grandfather. Something unforgivable. I don't want these colors, I don't want her. I don't want a soul mate. Guide me, please," he begged, "show me what to do to stop this." Only once had his grandfather ever answered, and that answer had shown him the path to power, to the dark side. No one on this ship could help him, but Kylo deeply felt that his grandfather could. If only he would appear.

On this occasion there was no answer, and Kylo sighed and exited the chamber with a final glance at the helmet. It had been a bribery from Snoke, he knew that, but it was his most cherished possession—a legitimate piece of his ancestor.

The common room of his cabin featured a window from reached from floor to ceiling and could be darkened for privacy. When in space, Kylo preferred to keep the window transparent, so he could take note every planet and star the ship passed. He dimmed the windows, and his reflection appeared in the glass.

As he hoped, his face was no longer the kind face of Ben Solo. The medical droids worked fast to heal the wound, and though the skin was new and sensitive, all of the blood was gone and it looked close to perfectly healed.

The scar cutting though his face was jagged and harsh. When he reached up to touch the still tender skin, it stung, and he drew his hand away quickly, a small grin playing on his features, an expression that only pained his face a bit. His smile was lopsided, intimidating. He could see why he had been well avoided in the corridor.

Though, Kylo Ren noticed that the scar was the same color as his lightsaber—an enraged red.