He takes the two steps forward required for him to keep the same distance.
“I’m not asking you to say anything, Jess. There isn’t anything to say. I’m not even asking you to understand, yet. I know you won’t. You think I don’t know that if our situations were reversed, I wouldn’t be desperately trying to shake sense into you? That I didn’t spend months trying to figure out a way to blow up the porter so that I could get back to the war, to you guys? Do you really think I even want to love anyone here? This place is a nightmare, Jess. I do my best to keep my spirits up because I’m stuck here and I need to survive it.”
He gestured back to the diner.
“That man in there? That man is one of my best friends - more than my best friend - and he’s only here half the time. He was here for months, and then the porter took him faster than that dog fight took L’ulo. But it doesn’t just take people. It brings them back, and and sometimes when it does, they’ve forgotten everything. Everything we had here together, he forgot. The life he managed to build outside the war, he forgot. All he remembered about me was the scant few days we spent back home fighting an impossible war.”
He put his hand on his chest, fingers spreading over his heart.
“Everything I love here gets taken from me. And I love 622, Jess. I know it doesn’t - I know perfectly well that if we were from the same time period, it would be me that would have killed him, okay? That I’ve killed thousands - - Jess, I’ve probably killed millions of men just like him, after Starkiller. Men like him or Finn - bred or kidnapped and raised from childhood to know nothing else except the that imperial war machine. And I know you want me to hate them but I don’t. They didn’t take L’ulo from me. They didn’t take anyone. The only thing 622 has done here was have the audacity to care about me, and I don’t see why that’s wrong.”
no subject
“I’m not asking you to say anything, Jess. There isn’t anything to say. I’m not even asking you to understand, yet. I know you won’t. You think I don’t know that if our situations were reversed, I wouldn’t be desperately trying to shake sense into you? That I didn’t spend months trying to figure out a way to blow up the porter so that I could get back to the war, to you guys? Do you really think I even want to love anyone here? This place is a nightmare, Jess. I do my best to keep my spirits up because I’m stuck here and I need to survive it.”
He gestured back to the diner.
“That man in there? That man is one of my best friends - more than my best friend - and he’s only here half the time. He was here for months, and then the porter took him faster than that dog fight took L’ulo. But it doesn’t just take people. It brings them back, and and sometimes when it does, they’ve forgotten everything. Everything we had here together, he forgot. The life he managed to build outside the war, he forgot. All he remembered about me was the scant few days we spent back home fighting an impossible war.”
He put his hand on his chest, fingers spreading over his heart.
“Everything I love here gets taken from me. And I love 622, Jess. I know it doesn’t - I know perfectly well that if we were from the same time period, it would be me that would have killed him, okay? That I’ve killed thousands - - Jess, I’ve probably killed millions of men just like him, after Starkiller. Men like him or Finn - bred or kidnapped and raised from childhood to know nothing else except the that imperial war machine. And I know you want me to hate them but I don’t. They didn’t take L’ulo from me. They didn’t take anyone. The only thing 622 has done here was have the audacity to care about me, and I don’t see why that’s wrong.”