AN:
I am so fucking ready for The Last Jedi.
This is a one-shot about how I think this trilogy should end since it's the end of the Skywalker Saga. No real plot speculation other than Gray Force Users, just a nice way to send off the series from Rey's point of view. Also, my Reylo heart can't take much more waiting. Also, their kid is going to be powerful AF.
I don't own these characters.
It's been twenty-five years to the day. Twenty-five years since Snoke and the First Order were defeated. Twenty-three years since Ben and I decided that we wanted to build this Academy. Twenty-one years since we married. Nineteen years since Leia was born.
Had you told me when I was on Jakku that I would have all this, I would've thought that the heat had gotten to your head.
But here I am, standing on the balcony that overlooks the training grounds, husband's arms wrapped around my midsection, and his chin resting on my head as we watch our daughter spar with several of her students. We taught her well. Three of them will rush her at once, yet she easily beats them all back. She flips and twirls as overly dramatic as her father.
Her students know that they have no chance against her, but they always want to try. I think that they believe that if there's enough of them, they could overpower her. They haven't found enough yet.
"That skirt is still so impractical," I comment as the panels of fabric fan out due to her spinning.
"She doesn't care." Ben reminds me. I know that she doesn't care, but I just keep imagining it getting caught on a saber and all of her hard work on the embroidery being ruined. When she first made it, she decided that she wanted to pay homage to her predecessors. She embroidered their names along the hems: Luke, Han, her namesake, her father's namesake, Padmé, Anakin, Poe, Finn, Rose, me, Ben, so many more all painstakingly sewn into that skirt.
Laughter starts erupting from the group in the training yard as Leia throws five of her attackers into the air where they desperately try to swim down. As the other students laugh they are also picked up into the air just kind of hanging there. "Get yourselves down. My power is stretched over eighteen of you, if your will is stronger than one-eighteenth of mine, you should be able to get down."
"Leia!" Ben calls stepping to my side. "Don't hurt them."
"They're fine," Leia yells back. "Do you doubt me?"
"Not for a second." Ben knows better than to doubt her or me or his mother. "But you have to put them down at some point."
"I'll give them an hour, if they haven't gotten themselves down yet, then I'll put them down. For added incentive, the first one with all feet on the ground will get to skip meditation tomorrow." That'll get them going. "If you are able to do this, I believe that you are sufficiently in-contact with the Force for the time being."
I sometimes forget how old she is. She's the same age I was when I left Jakku, but I still feel as though she is so much younger. My daughter has grown up into a strong leader. She's an excellent teacher, once we allowed her to start teaching classes we saw dramatic improvement. "It's getting late."
"Yeah, it is." Ben looks at the sun setting over the lake. Even after twenty-five years, he's still so handsome. He's graying, and his frown lines are more prominent, but he's still handsome. "It's going to be dark before they're let down."
"She's giving them an hour, I'm sure that one of them may be able to do it." Maybe.
Five all too familiar presences surround us. "What is she doing now?"
"Teaching her students," Ben explains and resumes his position behind me.
One of the students yells when she sees the Force Ghosts. Leia waves at us before saying, "They're fine, Andromeda."
"What's the point of this?" Luke asks, watching the teenagers desperately flail around.
"They're trying to overpower her will over them and get to the ground," I explain.
"That isn't a bad idea." Anakin shrugs. Why he looks like he did when he was young and not how he looked when he died, I will never understand.
"Tonight's the night." Leia looks fondly down at her granddaughter. "Three generations of fighting between the light and dark all ended, and the fourth..." She trails off as she watches Leia begin running inside to join us.
"And at long, long last, there is balance in the Force." Anakin smiles.
I made a post on Tumblr about this, but this makes sense to me if they are going the Gray Jedi route. It makes sense to me for Episode IX to end like this because if we're going in numerical order, you can basically look at the Prophecy from the Prequels as a task for the Skywalker bloodline. Anakin failed and destroyed the Jedi, Luke failed and destroyed the Sith, but now Ben can finish what Anakin started by bringing this balance. So basically, the Skywalker's job is done. They have fulfilled their task and their story is over. The Reylo child is the physical embodiment of this balance, of the Skywalkers finally getting their shit together and doing their jobs.