Chapter Four: Fate Becomes Fanged
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After a solid few months of wandering about the galaxy, near the Asteroid Belted Lybeya System, Rey sat in her room thinking, as she always did with the same two arguments conflicting in her head.
I guess a squadron couldn't hurt. No. No, they're already safe, Kylo would never suspect them on Kamino.
She rolled around in his chair.
Finn was right. Or was he wrong? I just want them safe, nothing else. And they are safe.
A friendly rebel voice spoke on the other side of her door, "General Leia must speak with you."
"Got it!" Rey responded, standing up.
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Leia sat in the empty war room, a deactivated map of the galaxy below her.
She closed her eyes, sensing when she entered the room, and spinning around to meet her, "Ah. Jedi Rey. Sit down please." The Commander said, offering a seat at the map table.
Rey sat down slowly, and she already knew what she was going to speak to her about but asked anyway, "C-Commander, what is this about?"
The aging woman looked at her, "I know about the twins Rey."
"Who told you?" She snapped.
"You already know who. He foolishly believed I would dispatch scarce troops to protect them. Or go against your wishes...and bring them here on the fleet."
"A-am I expelled from the Rebellion?"
Leia sighed, "A good Commander would have had Poe expelled for his little...insurrection over a year ago. But, we needed, and still need every pilot available. As for you, a good Commander would have you banned from stepping foot on another Resistance cruiser again." She smiled warmly, her wrinkled face rising, "But a good Grandmother listens."
She kept smiling, "I raised Ben, on the pretext that raising him close to me would guarantee a good son." She scoffed, looking aside, "I can see how mistaken I was. You on the other hand," Leia explained, resting her old hands on her cane, "Are a lot wiser for your age. You kept them away from the war, and you kept them in a place where Ben would never suspect them. Wherever that is. And you let them choose their own paths."
"Congratulations!" She exclaimed with her croaky voice, pounding her cane on the ground, "You're twice the mother I ever was."
"C-Commander I-"
"Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."
"Thank you." Rey said with a voice of relief.
"I only need one guarantee. That you never go behind my back, or behind the Resistance's back, and meet with anyone from the Empire again. Especially my son."
"Y-Yes Commander."
"I don't have much time left here." She mumbled, looking at the deactivated map, "I always thought that old furbag, Chewie, would die before me. But, Wookiees live longer than humans. Had I been a few ages younger, I'd have expelled you, and brought those children aboard the Tiberius to make sure Ben didn't take them. But, I want to go out on a clean conscience."
Seeing Rey's expression, Leia nodded calmly, "Yes. I know I'm dying. Its better to accept it than to not. Now go, and toss that man off the ship if you want to."
The Jedi turned around, leaving. As she did so, the door sliding close behind her, Leia fell to the floor, sliding out of her chair.
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Rey ran up to Poe, Rose and Finn speaking, before raising him with a Force grasp on his chest, "You...dog!" She shouted, making sure other rebels weren't about, whipping her head around.
"Rey calm down!" Rose yelled, talking to her from her side.
"You put my children's lives in danger!"
"I only told...Leia..." He gasped out, reaching for his neck with an orange Rebel glove, while kicking in the air.
"What if she told someone? And expelled me? What if right now, there was a Dreadnought flying over that orphanage blasting them both to pieces right now? What if word had gotten out?"
She moved her hand, indicating she could activate a button to the airlock, "Never. Put my children's lives in danger again."
"I...only wanted... to protect them..." He gasped, still kicking in the air, being raised with the Force.
Rey dropped him with a clatter, marching off angrily.
The deserted storm trooper laid on his side on the ground, before looking up to Poe and his own girlfriend Rose, "Remind me to never get on her bad side again."
"Agreed." They both said quickly, seeing her leave.
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The Jedi stood at a window, watching the galaxy swirl from the large Corvette Tiberius.
Finn stood next to her looking at her, slinking up to Rey's side slowly.
No one said anything, before Rey looked downwards at her boots, "Sorry about hurting you."
"Nah, its all right." He said with a wave of the hand, "I was only scared for my life. And I had it coming."
"Why do you want to protect them? They're not your children."
"The Commander's dying. The entire galaxy has been occupied. We don't have enough strength to show ourselves or take a base on a planet. Seems like they're the only chance we have."
"But they're babies. They can't even walk and you're placing the weight of...everything on their shoulders." She said, turning her head to them.
"Rey. I understand what you're going through. But it's only a matter of time before she passes, and then what do we have?"
"Hope."
"Right. That those kids will grow up and one day find us somehow. Years of sitting around waiting. This is ridiculous." He said shaking his head before whipping it to her, "If Ren finds them and kills them. Or worse, takes them as his own, we're doomed. Everything is doomed."
"Don't. Remind me." She said, tightening her fists and making the metal guardrail before the window tweak a little without touching it, "Don't remind me of the danger they're in. But know this. If they were here on this ship, in this fleet. They'd be in worse danger, we've been floating about doing nothing, waiting for time to pass. Waiting for him to find us. Its worse."
"You say that but-"
"They're my children Finn. I can do what I please with them."
At that moment, a helmeted Resistance fighter appeared, sweat on his brow from running, the man panting as well, showing her he had run all the way across the hull of the ship.
Rey and Finn looked at him.
No words were spoken, the man just nodded, before the three of them turned around and broke into a sprint.
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On Kamino, the twins began teething, the worst pains imaginable growing in their months old mouths.
They threw their heads back, wailing loudly, faces scrounged up in red discomfort.
Nurses tried to administer serums to calm their pain, but the glass needles shattered in their white hands.
Their cries filled the orphanage, becoming so powerful glass wavered, and shattered, the storm blowing into the orphanage.
Their wailing grew in intensity, the lack of serums just made them cry louder and louder, making Nurses clamp hands over their tiny holes in their heads acting as ears, walking off only to find more serums shattered from the Force reverberating from the twins cries.
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Leia laid on her death bed, the Jedi pushing past the massive crowd of Rebels around her in a huge mass, in her brown Masters robe.
The blue updated P-13 medical droid explained in its male robotic and calm voice, "Her bio energy has deteriorated greatly. As if she was holding onto one last bit of strength."
She knelt, feeling her cold and wrinkled hand. Rey jumped up, speaking to the droid, "There has to be a surgery, or a treatment or procedure or something!"
The droid shook his light blue head, "I'm sorry. She's simply at that tall of an age. It happens all beings, even the best of them."
"R-Rey." The woman croaked out, "Listen to me."
"Yes?" She asked, tearing up quickly before turning her head to her.
She beckoned her forwards with a frail old finger, before whispering in her ear.
"Are they beautiful?"
"Yes." The Jedi said, nodding with tears in her eyes, clutching her weak hand, "Yes, they are."
"Good." She whispered back, reaching for a wooden square pendant around her neck, "After the war." Leia explained, frail voice shaking and croaking, "I went to my mothers tomb on Coruscant. Oh!" She gasped happily, "How beautiful she looked. I found this on her corpse, I never knew what it meant, only that it was special to her. Take it."
Rey gently lifted the leather chain, and picked up the necklace off the dying woman's neck sobbing, "Don't leave us Commander. D-Don't leave us."
"Sorry. As the droid said, it happens to all beings."
"We-we need you." She begged, Rose sobbing into Finn's chest behind her, Poe looking down sadly.
"Make sure you give them my necklace, when the time's right." The Commander whispered, nodding. She paused, smiling before croaking out, "I Leia Organa, General of all Allied Resistance Forces, pass command of the entire Rebellion to you, the Jedi Master Rey."
"N-no!" Rey exasperated, crying, while laying her head on her stomach.
"That's it. That's all." She said still smiling, "There's a little inscription I added on the back of the wooden pendant. Read it. Don't. Forget. It..." The Princess of Alderaan added, turning her head slightly to the side, a smile still frozen on her face, eyes closed.
The Jedi hugged her tightly, sobbing into her weathered shoulder, crying onto it, the wooden pendant hanging from the leather wrapped around Rey's fist.
She kept crying, gasping and sobbing into her shoulder, sniffling, she kept crying as the entire Resistance bowed their heads.
Her body then de-materialized, as Rey's head fell onto her own hand, which was grasping the now vanished shoulder blade of Leia Organa.
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The wailing of the twins increased, glass shattering everywhere, the entire orphanage seemed to be in uproar. The Force amplified their cries of pain, Nurses trying to help them after finding plastic bottles of serum and feeding it to them.
As they calmed, Rey stood at the docking bay of Tiberius, before it opened, letting her white gown, passed down to her from the long passed Mon Mothma, flow into space.
The Jedi collapsed onto her knees, still holding the wooden pendant next to her heart. As she sobbed, the entire Resistance watched the white gown flow off infinitely, wondering where it would end up.
Rey looked at the pendant with tears in her eyes, the leather string acting as a chain as old as the necklace itself.
She had never noticed Leia wearing it for all those years, wondering why the General had chosen her last moments to give it to her. Turning it over, tears falling into her palm, she read the simple word carved onto it.
Hope.
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Author's Note: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa fellow Star Wars Fans. May the Force be with you all!
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