Star Wars: Duel of the Fates

Chapter 69

Rey was dazed when she awoke, blinking away what seemed like a dream. She rolled over and stood.

To her far left Kylo lay on the ground, his breathing painful and laboured.

She knelt beside him and helped him to sit up. She looked at his wound and shook her head as blood continued to pool around him.

He lifted his hand and began to force choke her, but he was losing his strength and Rey easily broke free. She closed her hand around his and placed it on the ground, before detaching hers and leaning away.

"Why are you still here?" he asked hoarsely.

"Because...because no one should die alone."

"You had all of that power...and you let it go."

"I used it to save my friends, but...no one should have that kind of power."

"So this was our fate...all along..." he said as he began to rock unsteadily, "...You should go."

"No...I'll not leave you..." she said helping him to lie back down.

His breathing became laboured as he felt his body failing, "So this is where the legacy ends..."

"Nothing ever really ends."

Kylo's chest moved once more and then stilled.

Rey took a moment to study his pale face before carefully laying his lightsaber over his heart and covering it with his hands. She got to her feet and looked around at the ruined arena. 

Lifting the rocks and debris, she created a rough tomb for him.

Kneeling and placing her hand on the ground beneath her, she imagined the X-Wing she had flown in. Focusing on the details of his battered paintwork and the various patched attempts at past repairs, she could see every detail of it in her mind's eye.

She felt everything shift around her and found herself back by the fighter.

Climbing up the side of it, she lifted Darth Vader's helmet from the cockpit where she had left it and jumped down. She scanned the area until her eyes rested on a particularly large tree and laid the helmet at its base.

Closing her eyes and focusing, the ground beneath the helmet started to crumble as it descended from sight. The dirt writhed until she opened her eyes and it settled, looking much like it did before.

There was an odd sense of relief, as if an old wrong had somehow been made right, that some peace had been granted by this action.

She stared around at this dead world that no longer had any purpose beyond a monument to the past.

When she had all that power she could have wiped it away with a single thought, but now it would always be here for those it would allow entrance. Here they could see the broken towers of a long forgotten monastery and the graves of the first and last Skywalker Jedi knights; here something ended as the past slipped away behind her and a new beginning formed up ahead.

Smiling she touched her hand to the tree. Tendrils of light spread out from branch to branch and tree to tree, rapidly illuminating the entire plane in front of her.

There would always be a balance: great light for great darkness.