BEYOND THE STARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

CHAPTER 11: KENOBI

~With Marisa~

Marisa looks around the new room as the two stormtroopers bid her goodbye, looking around, the room is nothing to look at. Nothing more than a simple black bed and a drawer sit against the metal walls. Going to sit on the bed to gather her thoughts, she finds it comfortable enough. Compared to the freezing cold of her cell, a bed was a luxury she had not known in months.

Her thoughts trail off to Earth, oh how things have changed since then. The smiling girl from before was long gone, and as she looks into the mirror embedded into the wall to her left she finds the woman looking back a stranger to the one who'd look back at her then. Her thoughts of earth turn to questions, if she is from earth, how could she be force sensitive? The only explanation would mean-

With a sounding knock at her door, Marisa's wide eyes close as she takes a breath before going to answer. And as the door creaks open a tall familiar masked man stands in front of her. A rueful smile appears on her face as she opens the door wider to let him in.

With her back turned, she brings a hand to her face as her quiet giggles turn to laughs before she throws her head back with a last sounding laugh; her voice hopelessly cheery. "You were right. The resistance is a pack of liars and traitors crusading around as saints. Giving false hope to the hopeless and leaving them for dead when they become a nuisance." her hair curls around her fingers as she grips it tight with white-knuckled fists.

His robotic voice fills the room, monotone and untelling to the emotion behind it. "I tried to tell you."

She pauses before answering, "I know..."

The room goes silent once again before her hands drop to her sides, "Kylo..." she turns around to face him looking into the eyes of his mask with furrowed brows. "Show me the dark side. I'm ready for the truth."

Kylo nods, waving his hand to the bed, "Sit down, legs crossed. Close your eyes."

Once sat upon the bed, she closes her eyes waiting for further instruction. "Now reach out, feel your anger. Let the darkness fuel it and let it consume you, and follow it to what you seek."

Focusing on the once suffocating darkness that surrounds her, whispers begin to flood her mind in every direction. The only one she recognized being the first, the promise that Poe had given her that day.

I will not leave you here to suffer, I promise...

Traitors...

Liars...

All of them...

Show her the truth...

They're all liars...

From beyond the visual world a voice cries out, trying desperately to cut through the dark whispers that silence him. Her brows furrow as a familiar voice fights its way through the sounding whispers; though it is muffled, far away, and undistinguishable. But as it continues to cry the voice becomes louder, more powerful until it is a simple voice no longer. Her body leans backward as if hands were shaking her shoulders. TURN BACK MARISA! DON'T LISTEN TO IT! And as that cry rings through her mind, the smallest hint of the light she had heard so much about shines through. An aura of serenity and peace, of life and a balance between all things. Through the surrounding darkness it shines through like a light at the end of a tunnel.

And as she recognizes the voice as the same one who told her to turn back all those months ago, her teeth grind against each other and her hands clench the sheets beneath them as her rage turns to fury. No. She tells the voice, shoving it away. Where were you then?