The Sands of Jakku

Epilogue

Thick black smoke rose from Snoke's body over the battlefield, covering everything in darkness and the scent of decay. Rey covered her mouth and gagged, choking on it. She fell to her knees opposite of Kylo, her eyes watering, hands covering her face.

She closed her eyes tight, willing it to go away. She tried to escape it until she was curled into a ball against the sand, her heart hammering and lungs screaming for clean air.

Distantly, she was aware someone was calling out to her.

"I told you not to underestimate me," Snoke's voice repeated over and over again in her head.

One year later

Rey woke with a start, gasping and clutching at her throat. Next to her Kylo jolted upright at the sudden displacement of her weight. She panted from her nightmare, reaching for him when panicked tears began to fall down her face.

She pressed her face into his chest and his arms wrapped around her immediately. He pressed soft kisses to the top of her head, smoothing his hands over her hair.

"Shh, Rey, shh," he said, his voice soft and calm as she cried into him. It had been a year since they defeated Snoke, but Rey was still plagued by nightmares of her vision in the aftermath of his death.

Kylo could remember what it looked like. He'd fallen to the ground after Snoke's defeat, after they both had been so overjoyed. Then she was struck by a terrible vision of black smoke poisoning all of Jakku.

From the vantage point of everyone else, the scene was strange. Rey's body still against the sand, next to the corpse of the tyrant they had just erased from existence together.

It took hours to coax Rey free from the terror of her vision. She had never been the same after that, not even now.

In the wake of the battle of Jakku, General Organa, his mother —his heart still ached at the thought that she was alive and not just something he had made up as a child to cope with loneliness—had laid her claim to the land. No one disputed her. The Palace Guard had been decimated by the Resistance.

The last surviving soldiers pledged their allegiance, ordered to do so by Captain Phasma herself in the wake of Snoke's demise. Jakku was much better off.

The change didn't happen overnight.The destruction of everything General Organa had once had in place to benefit the people of Jakku had set them back immensely. Snoke had ensured that even in death he would cast a dark shadow over the sands of Jakku.

This was something many seemed to believe was the true meaning behind Rey's vision that day on the battlefield.

Rey had never been convinced of that. Even Obi-Wan had sided with her, the two of them cryptic and mysterious in the wake of their victory at the palace.

"It's okay," Kylo continued to whisper into her hair. He pressed more kisses against her temple, her cheek, her jaw. His hands were a reassuring weight on her back, rubbing up and down and in small circles.

She sighed, her hiccuping sobs subsiding with his comfort. However, the eerie feeling that Snoke was coming back to finish what he started stuck with her.

She hoped she was wrong, but a part of her knew it wasn't uncommon for powerful sorcerers like Snoke to come back and train a new generation of the magically gifted. She shivered at the thought.

Magic didn't discriminate between the darkness and the light; all it saw was power. Obi-Wan had told her that once in hushed words when she was still recovering from the shock of her vision.

She had seen his soul , Snoke's disgusting and crippled pitch black soul leave his body in a cloud of toxic smoke. The image would be stuck with her for as long as she lived.

"Are you going back to sleep?" she asked him, untangling herself from him to look out of the windows of their bed chamber. It was still dark outside, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. Not after another nightmare.

He glanced out at the sky as well and sighed.

"For a little while," he told her and she nodded. Finn would likely be awake by now. He and Poe did drills with the soldiers before the sun rose over the horizon to warm the sands.

Everyone had fallen so easily into their new roles after the palace had become theirs. But Rey was still struggling to fill her role as the Princess of Jakku. She couldn't help but think the title had been wasted on her. She had proven time and time again that she was in no way royalty. No matter how many times Leia tried to convince her that it didn't matter, she still never truly felt like she belonged to that world.

Truthfully, the only place she ever felt that she belonged was by Kylo's side. And if that meant she was royalty, then she would have to accept her fate.

He leaned forward and kissed her soundly, bringing her out of her thoughts.

"I love you," he told her, pressing his forehead against hers.

"I know," she responded with a smile, watching as he lay back down to sleep.