Force Destiny

Darkness

The darkness was like a thousand needles, poking at her senses, demanding entry. What was the point in fighting it? She had pled with the Force to tell her who she was; this was it.

You will destroy everything you love... She would. No, she wouldn't; she already had. It was too late. Hope was gone. The Dark Army would slaughter the Resistance. Poe would fight until the end, doing whatever was necessary to save the galaxy, but it wouldn't be enough. Rose would be brave in the face of death, but it wouldn't save her. Finn would protect the ones he loved, but she would lose him, just as she had lost Leia, Luke, and Han. There was no saving them, because she had assured their fates. There was no saving Kylo. They would kill each other, and it would all be because of her.

Her thoughts raged around her, but she refused to let them out into the Force; she knew how dangerous that could be. So she allowed more darkness in to soothe them.

You killed your parents... You will kill your friends... You will kill Kylo Ren... Was this what the vision had tried to show her? Would she be the reason Finn was dead under that blanket? Would she be burdened with stopping her bondmate? Or... would she kill him when he tried to stop her? The darkness devoured her fear with rapacious need. The terrible claws of a monster found her in her darkness—she had felt it once before, in the throne room on the Supremacy, in the whispers in the darkness, in Kylo's nightmare.

Sidious.

Visions not her own subjugated all her other thoughts. It began with the memory of her destroying the ill-fated ship, killing her parents over and over again with relentless brutality. New images of her parents screaming as the ship ripped apart, their horrifying deaths, their decomposing bodies in the sands overtook her senses. She remembered witnessing Kylo's psychological torture in his memories. Distantly, she knew it wasn't real, but it didn't help that it all felt real. She couldn't shut her eyes, she couldn't plug her ears, she couldn't turn away from the sickening images. It became her only reality.

The torment transformed from the past to the future—the death of her friends by her own hand. She could sense the vibration of the crackling red lightsaber in her fist, see the terror in her friends' eyes, hear the agony in their screams. She could smell the iron in the blood that stained the corridors of the Millennium Falcon, and the burning of tissue as the plasma blade met the resistance of their skin. She could feel the stickiness under her feet, the weight of their broken bodies, the unnatural chill of their skin.

Rey dropped to her knees, her fingernails clawing into her hair as she watched herself kill her friends in increasing ruthlessness. At first, the feel of the floor underneath her knees and the drag of her nails against her skin was grounding, but even those sensations dulled after an immeasurable amount of time. An hour, maybe? A year? Time didn't exist there. There was no past or future. She screamed until her throat burned and clung to that last thread of reality. She knew all too soon the pain would fade, and she would be lost in helplessness against the endless onslaught of images. "Please make it stop," she begged the room, and when her prayers went unheeded, "Please let me die." The darkness held her prisoner; she was all alone.

Sidious had won.

"Rey!" she heard distant voices screaming her name, could feel real hands shaking her shoulders, but all she could see were the depraved images of her friends' deaths. Finn was choking on his own blood. Rose's neck was twisted into an unnatural position, though it was a better fate than Poe's, who was left with a burned, smoking hole where his eye had once been. It didn't matter if she could hear voices screaming for her, the death before her was her only reality. Soon those screams transformed to match the images in her head. She squeezed her eyes tight in a futile attempt to shut it all out. Her mind vaguely registered her bondmate's energy in the Force, drowning in darkness, as the screams of her friends were silenced. There was a snap in the Force, and then it all disappeared.