Grayscale

Is all that there is between light and dark... shades of gray?

Kreia, dying, isn't so sure, anymore. As she slips away, she isn't slipping either into the light or into the dark or even into the purgatory of eternal gray she had always felt that she would be doomed to exist within for all eternity. Rather, she was slipping into something so much more—into glorious, vibrant, prismatic rainbows, shifting and shimmering and burning sheer color into that space behind her eyes, crimsons and azures and golds and glorious emerald greens that cut her asunder and cleaved to her soul and somehow leave her feeling more whole than ever before.

There's a reason, she thinks abruptly, that no one has a white or a black lightsaber. It's a silly connection, seemingly superficial, but it's true—the world doesn't exist in terms of black or white. She's known this for a long time, but always considered herself a creature of gray. That assumption wasn't wrong but certainly simplistic, and the nuance left unstated by either Jedi or Sith philosophies ironically was in their very hands, every time they leaped forward to prove their point by the edge of a lightsaber.

Strange, how the most penetrating of understandings comes when it no longer matters.

Or maybe—maybe, as she dissolves into light, this is when it matters most. Maybe this was the realization that all lives lead towards, that there wasn't right or wrong, black or white, good or evil, life or death, but only existence.

.

Even the act of breathing, Atton knows, is tainted by the thought of her. Breathing, as she had taught him to do it—fully, wholly, with purpose and with intent, drawing in universe in its entirety and releasing it as one might a mote of dust. Breathing for calm, breathing for clarity.

Breathing, he now realizes, for her.

He watches. She's sleeping, or as much as a Jedi can ever sleep. It's not the result of trust, as he knows heartbreakingly well that she'd trust anyone with her life who would just take the time to smile back. Still, knowledge of that trust is almost too much to bear, but he'll bear it because it feels so nice to be trusted even if suddenly the whole universe is on his shoulders because she's somehow everything to him, and somehow, she's nothing to anyone else.

Atton wonders, absently, whether she is breathing for him.

Yes, he thinks—but she's breathing for the whole universe-

-and later, she releases him like a mote of dust.

.

The Exile was never exiled by anyone other than herself. She knew this, knew this with every choice she made. The Council assumed that she hadn't understood the gravity of her actions—couldn't understand how anyone could understand the sort of destruction left in her wake and still choose that path, knowingly, willingly, and still be sane and yet also still be good. They exile her because they didn't know what else to do with her, couldn't think of any way to keep her from harming them in turn other than by pushing her as far away from them as they possibly could.

The Council did not understand that she would have done this to herself anyway. She was rendered a wound when she saved their way of life, a gaping maw of hurt and need, and it would not have been proper to have the Council pick at the healing scabs like schoolchildren who had bloodied their knees for the first time. She had to forget herself for a while, lose herself in the wounds of other worlds, wandering long lost ways that Jedi would not deign tread.

But she wasn't a Jedi anymore, not really—she was simply, and solely, the Exile. She could never fully fall back into that world with its simple promises of goodness and order and kindness and compassion. It was insufficient. It wasn't that a dark was needed to balance the light or anything else suitably simplistic for those seeking simple answers. It wasn't enough, and that was that.

.

When the Exile first meets Revan, she feels drawn in—even though she is the wound in the Force and Revan is the source—pulled in by those hypnotic eyes, cold and hot and so very clear all at the same time. She feels small, tiny, pathetic, for following him all the way out here. She's awkward, at first, graceless and apologetic despite her years and purported wisdom, unsure of what to do around someone who held himself with such strength and surety.

As she watches him though, as they fight side by side, a sort of pride worms its way into her tentative smile, realizing that all that heat and cool that Revan emitted like a dying sun—that was because Revan was, fundamentally, completely, wholly alone and incomplete without her presence. He was burning bright and burning out. He was unstable, and she the ground: he falls and she catches him, every time, a steadiness and a stability far deeper than love that exists as simple fact. He needed her, and so he called, and so she came.

There's plenty for them to do, and it's an impossible task. It's the fate of the universe, after all

Maybe, she needed him too.

.

Atton dreams of her. At first, he thinks it's the shock of it, her having left. Emotional momentum, unable to carry on its natural trajectory, instead of transferred itself into the realms of fantasy. He dreams of things he's never had, the crush of her lips against his and how the soft the skin of her thighs would feel given (in)appropriate friction. Sometimes he dreams of love and sometimes he dreams of sex; he dreams of everything because when he wakes up, he has nothing at all and so it scarcely matters. He dreams of marrying her, their honeymoon on dozens of different planets scattered across the stars, he dreams of homes large and small, the Ebon Hawk to carved caves within the cliffsides of Dantooine.

And children—at first he dreamed exclusively of having her all to himself, holding her and holding her and holding her so tight that there was nothing else that could possibly come between them, not fate, not the Force, not Revan, not even his own fears of what it meant to have a life together. But then, then, it was in a dream that he realized that having her meant that he could make things with her, and her eyes—her eyes set under his brow on a face that was an exquisite mixture of the two of theirs, that was a sort of marking or claiming as well. The children always had her eyes. They were so open and loving to him that they made his heart bleed with care.

Later, he realizes that the dreams are too perfect, and the piercingly pure joy of seeing her by night made the day seem dim and drab. For a while, he tries to stop sleeping, even tries the odd drug, but then they start to come to him when he's awake, too. Soon, he finds the children he teaches at the Academy indistinguishable from the ones he holds tightly to in his dreams.

Later still, he realizes that that's the point. The Exile was always so much more than a bit of flesh and a set of hips to grasp at. He's a vulgar man but there was a deeper context to seemingly base desires. This wasn't just love, this was a way of life—he didn't just love her but he lived her. The old cliché applied: his students are his children, their children.

When he teaches, he's not whiting out their existence to be only of the Good. He teaches colorful language and colorful customs and laughs and cries and screams and shouts and tries to be something more than this bipolar bullshit too many of the other Jedi are trying to embed into these youth. He teaches them more than the grayscale of Kreia, that peculiar spectrum upon which one can either rise or fall, go up into the light or slip into darkness. The Force is light, white light, but not in the bleached sense of being devoid of all else. It is—everything. It is iridescence, it is prismatic, it is the highest beauty and the deepest truth he has ever known, dazzling and quiet and calm and clear.

He does his best to live this. And in his dreams, he does, though differently from in the waking world. Inexplicably, inescapably, that is enough.

.

A/N: I may add to this later, but I think this is sufficient for the moment. I wanted to do something a little more abstract and philosophical than a lot of what I've seen of these characters thus far, hence the lack of dialogue, though if it felt overly so feel free to tell me. I'm also pretty new to this fandom, so tell me if I stepped into too many tropes. :)

Constructive criticism gladly accepted and digested; I'm open to coming back and tweaking this a bit, depending on the sort of feedback I get. I don't have a beta reader at present, so any interested parties should feel free to drop me a line. I've got several other pieces I'm currently working on as well that are a bit more substantial.