Force Destiny

Indigo Kiss

Rey felt as if she were emerging from a dream. "Ben?"

There was darkness, so much darkness clouding her thoughts. But in the center of it all, there was a light. "Rey, it's me," a familiar voice told her. She felt the darkness melting away from her mind, releasing her from its bonds. "You're not alone." Those words...a glimpse of a hand touching another, illuminated by fire flashed through her mind. That sparked a flood of memories, along with fear of who had suppressed them. The Finalizer. Ben. Sidious.

She quickly scanned their surroundings. She was in a room with Ben and her friends and...Sidious. They were standing next to a control panel, and Ben was focused on flipping the red-illuminated switches. This wasn't Force Destiny, but he was readying a machine, she realized. Rey could feel the monster still clawing at her mind in the extensive darkness that still shadowed her thoughts, but there was just enough light to contend with it.

Rey, sweetheart, I need your help, she heard over the bond. Will you trust me?

An image entered her mind of her pressing the lightsaber to his abdomen as she had in the Force illusion by Sidious. She saw herself threatening to ignite it, enough to distract the monster so Finn could thrust his lightsaber through him. She hoped Ben was certain that the threat of his death would be sufficient enough distraction for Finn to get close enough. I need you, he whispered. If he thought this was their shot, then she trusted him. She met his eyes and hoped he saw the concordance in them.

She watched him remove a small, square remote from the control panel as she stepped closer. "You're not the real Ben," she said, playing her part. She could feel Sidious's attention focus on them.

"I am Ben," he said, "I won't hurt you, Rey." It was the truth; she could see it in his eyes. That wasn't the part that terrified her. She had seen this before. Her gaze shifted to Sidious, meeting the familiar eyes with unfamiliar emotions in them. His knowing smile was worse. This was the vision he had shown her. Rey focused her stare on Ben and hoped he saw in hers that she would never hurt him, either, even if that was what she had to convince the monster she would do. The vision was wrong. It had to be wrong. She stepped forward, pressing the hilt of her lightsaber against his abdomen. She tried to suppress the fear that shuddered through her as she did.

"You'll die for what you did," she spat, imagining it was Sidious at her mercy. "Any last words?"

"Yes," the clone hissed. "Kill him." The blasterfire that had surrounded them fell instantly silent. Though every cell in her body ached to, she knew she couldn't glance back at her friends. She could sense them in the Force, however. They had all dropped to the floor, writhing, grasping at their throats. She knew what Sidious had done. It took everything in her not to react. Her friends needed her, so she channeled her fear and anger into her performance.

Her performance was abandoned, however, when she felt a violent shudder and then a powerful swell in the Force. Her eyes met Ben's. From the fear in them, she knew he understood the precarious situation as well as she did. The hypermatter-annihilation reactor. Something catastrophic had compromised the containment of hypermatter particles inside the reactor. It was destabilizing. If the hypermatter particles that crashed into each other to create the incredible amounts of energy to power and propel a durasteel city through space were no longer contained, it would create an explosion similar in energy to Starkiller. If she didn't do something, they would all die. Her eyes scanned the room in panic as she formulated a plan. Her eyes caught those of the monster, and he must have seen something in the darkness still clouding her vision. His lips curled into a sneer.

He knows.

That wasn't what made her blood run cold, however. No, what truly unsettled her was when that sneer transformed into a grin. Then her bondmate's finger moved for the switch on the lightsaber. "Ben?"