Force Destiny

Droid Devastation

The Force snapped, and Kylo was returned to his training room. His back collapsed against the wall as he tried to steady his heaving gasps. He never expected he would see her again. Why would Rey do that to him? Didn't she consider how that would destroy him? How could she not warn him that his strong, iron-willed mother looked so... broken? What had he done to her? His mind supplied the answer, of course; he had taken her husband and brother from her, what should he have expected? Not love. Why did that make it even harder?

She abandoned me, she lied to me, I was just a burden, a monster - how could she still look at me like that after everything? She was relieved to see me. Why?

He screamed out into the room, igniting the lightsaber with trembling hands. "Go home, Blue!" he commanded his droid. He knew what he needed, and he refused to allow the astromech to witness it. The droid sensed the ferocity of his tone and complied immediately. When the room was empty, he turned to the training droids.

Kylo enabled all three with a wave of his hand.

The training had faded, however. Kylo launched a deadly assault against the droids. They were designed for both offensive and defensive maneuvers, but he knew their weaknesses. It would not be a fair fight. Skewering the weapon straight through the first droid, he launched it across the room. It shattered into pieces as it struck a wall. The second was easily decapitated with the momentum as he pivoted. It dropped to the floor in a shower of sparks. The third forced him to parry a few attacks, but he swung his lightsaber above his head and with a perfectly timed deactivation he brought it through the droid's defenses. His blade severed the droid in half, and it crashed to the floor with a dull thud, smoking from its inner chambers.

He roared in dominance, his back arched, his face raised to the heavens. The primal war cry reverberated off the walls of the training hall. His chest heaved as he took stock of the destruction around him. He sighed in contentment. It felt like nothing could diminish that feeling of triumph and conquest. The universe took it as a challenge, however, as the universe always seemed to do with him.

He realized his victorious moment would be short-lived as the energy around him changed. He felt an overwhelming tranquility settle over him. The Force felt... heavy. It was the same heavy sensation he had perceived moments after Luke had disappeared on Crait. He felt an abrupt breeze gently tousle his hair. He felt her presence. Not Rey. His mother. The energy warmed him as his blood ran cold. He choked on his breath.

He knew.

No.

Sensing her energy around him, he froze. Even after all those years, he would recognize it anywhere. He felt love, regret, and forgiveness gently envelop him. For a moment, he felt the peace he had long sought. Then, like a flame extinguished by the wind, she was gone. He closed his eyes to the galaxy, but he couldn't shut this out. His hands trembled, his breath came in short pants, and his sight blurred. He was desperate to be wrong.

The truth, however, hit him like a blaster bolt to the stomach. There was no denying the devastating loss of her energy in the Force. She was gone. Leia Organa Solo was gone.

His mother was dead.

I killed her.

Thousands of memories, many he had attempted to repress, exploded in his mind, each one splintering into the depths of his soul. He first remembered her fearful eyes when she had seen the destruction he had ravaged in his room after an especially terrifying bout of nightmares. It was then that he realized the only person who ever believed in him was scared of him and all he could think of was not you, too.

He remembered the sting of her hand on his cheek as she slapped him, jolting him back to his senses after he had snapped and thrown his father against the wall with the Force. It was an act of betrayal in his eyes, choosing the man who was screaming belligerently at her over her own son who had come to her defense.

He remembered the polite, but curt words she used in the presence of the other Senate members, explaining again why she was too busy to hear about his problems. It had happened in a moment of weakness, when he had almost broken down and told her about what that creature had whispered in his head. He never made that mistake again.

He remembered the sound of a slight sniffle as she lay on her bed, the only sign she was crying, as he sat next to her and comforted her. "Just go!" he screamed at his father, the object of her sorrow, who was standing remorsefully in the doorway.

He remembered the lonely nights when he could almost hear her voice, as he stared up at the stars in search of her ship, waiting for her to come back to him. To come back home from the long Senate meetings, to come back from her travels, to come back to the Jedi temple, to come back for him after he'd fallen, to care enough about her son to bring him home.

Those were the easy memories to remember, but, as his grief crashed through his resolve, he remembered more.

He remembered her soft fingers as she guided his hands to create swift strokes of ink across the parchment, an encouraging smile playing on her lips as he groaned in irritation. "Better you than me, kid," his father chuckled from across the room.

He remembered her lulling voice, both staring up at the stars through his window, as she sang him lullabies and recalled the fantastic adventures of his father while he was away. Sometimes his father would join the storytelling on a holocall. His favorite was their love story, though neither could agree quite how it happened. "...And I called him a 'scruffy-looking, nerf herder," she said. "That's when I knew she loved me back," his father replied, mirth beaming in his eyes.

He remembered the praise in her eyes as she counted the complicated steps of the Alderaanian royal dance, her patience calming when he clumsily tripped on his gangly limbs again. If his father walked in, he would suddenly have something he desperately needed help with on the Falcon. His mother would roll her eyes, fix the older man with a reproachful stare, but allow his father to rescue him. It took him years to figure out that his father never actually needed his help.

He remembered her joyful laughter as his father and Uncle Chewie taught him to fly out of the atmosphere for the first time. Chewie sat next to him, calmly barking directions. He laughed hysterically as his father shouted warnings behind him, knuckles white as he gripped the back of his chair. His mother smiled and said, "Now you know how I feel flying with you and the walking carpet over here."

He remembered her warm embrace as he cried in shame, having destroyed an irreplaceable heirloom at the Museum of the Republic with his untamed power in the Force. They were banned, and he thought it was because of him. He later found out it was because his father punched the curator in the nose, though no one ever told him why.

And he remembered the tears, the first time he had ever truly seen her cry - when she promised she would come back, when she told him it wasn't goodbye forever... but it was forever. He would never see her again, save for once in a courtyard on Hosnian Prime, and what Rey just forced upon him through the bond.

It didn't seem real. He had just seen her. She had talked to him, she was alive. Then he had run from his past – again – and his mother was gone because of it. The past was dead. He finally got exactly what he had wanted all this time. It was over. And that meant nothing to him in the face of what he lost.

There was no freedom from the conflict as his former master had promised. He had lost the people who had abandoned and betrayed him. He had been tormented for years over what they had done to him. Yet nothing compared to the torment he felt when he lost them.

When will I be free? Why do I still... why do I still love them?

His knees buckled under the weight of what he lost. He collapsed to the floor in a heap amidst the debris of the droids spread haphazardly around him. Tears blinded him as he reached out for the comfort of anything near him. He found the robotic hand of a fallen droid and grasped it desperately, squeezing until the physical pain took over. He hummed softly to himself, and the long-repressed tune of an old Alderaanian lullaby was the only sound in the training room.