If my humble swill was worthy of such an honor, I know who I'd dedicate it too. When I was a young child, in the dark ages of the 1980s, there was only one princess truly worth looking up to, and I've shed many tears at the passing of the delightful person who brought that princess to life. She will be dearly missed.

And Leia will feature fairly prominently in later chapters.

Graphic violence in this chapter.

Chapter 26: Snoke is One Sick Fuck

Two pairs of matching jackboots clomped forward, down a long set of wide, steep stairs, and into the main audience chamber. Snoke stood from his stone throne as they entered, evil but cordial. Rey was a little surprised by his size. He was inhumanly tall, but she had expected a veritable giant, based on Kylo's having asked her to do all of that practice moving huge objects. She also took note of the solitary guard standing immediately behind his throne.

"Snoke. Your time is up."

Kylo didn't waste a moment, igniting his saber as he came to a stop at the base of the stairs to Snoke's throne. Rey felt a twinge of confusion and embarrassment. She'd expected Kylo to make some extended speech on the motivations for his betrayal, but he seemed to be cutting right to the chase. Frankly, it struck Rey as a bit rude to murder one's mentor without an elaborate preamble, no matter how much they deserved it. Then again, the whole idea of assassinating someone politely seemed a bit silly.

Snoke's thin, beak-like lips quirked into a smile, and he raise a hand. Kylo flinched, and Rey instantly sensed that Snoke was probing his mind. Kylo's saber stilled in his hand and he just stood there, staring blankly. He was clearly doing exactly what he'd told her to do, the other day - to be passive so as to avoid calling attention to important secrets. But that didn't make sense. Why go through such discomfort when he'd already revealed his traitorous intentions? What was he afraid Snoke might find out? What secret was so worth protecting?

After a few seconds, Snoke fell back in his chair, lowering his hand with a sneer of disappointment. His eyes left Kylo, and he gazed off into the shadows. "Subdue them."

And from those shadows, emerged a horde of Snoke's undead guards. There was at least twenty of them, and they showed a good deal more diversity than the First Order usually employed. Robed as they were, Rey spotted a diminutive Gand, a bulbous-headed Bith, and even a snail-like Ithorian. She immediately noticed that they did not appear to be armed, but somehow that was even more disquieting. The only conceivable reason a bodyguard wouldn't be armed, was if they did not need additional weapons.

Snoke's guards seemed to split into two groups, one heading toward Kylo, the other toward Rey. She frankly felt a little insulted that Kylo seemed to have twice as many shambling toward him. He was clearly perceived as the greater threat.

Eyes focused on her incoming attackers, Rey heard the low thrum of Kylo's saber, and took that as her cue to fight. Within a split second, her own blade had ignited, and she swung it in a vicious downward cut, slicing well into one guard's head. She whirled to engage the next nearest foe, but by now, the several remaining guards had each raised a hand, much as a Force user would.

There was no burst of kinetic energy, nor a flash of lightning, but she felt it just the same.

She gasped when it hit her. At first, it didn't seem too different from getting her wind knocked out of her. But hidden under that sensation, creeping, cold and insidious, was the despair that Kylo had warned her of.

This was a disaster. How could she have been so stupid as to agree to this? This was stupid. This was pointless. Why was it her job to save the galaxy? Why was she always the one getting dumped on? Why should she care about being a hero, saving other people? Why should she care about others when no one cared, had ever cared, would ever care about her?

She took a step backwards, but her boot caught at the tails of her surcoat, causing her to stumble back into one of the creatures behind her. Its outstretched fingers brushed the back of her neck, so cold that they seemed almost slimy. That skin-crawling sensation seemed to snap some sense into her for a moment. These thoughts she'd been having were one of the Bogan powers. They were trying to sap her will to fight, make her give up. She gritted her teeth, raised an arm, and attempted a hearty Force push to shove the approaching fighters back.

But nothing happend. A blast that powerful should have sent them flying, but not a one even faltered. Then she recalled that other power - when they touch you, the ability to use the Force disappears, and the one behind her still had it's freezing fingers on her neck. With a jerk, she jumped away from it, freeing herself from its touch. She instantly attempted another push, but again nothing.

Before she could regroup, she once again began to realize the futility of all this. What was the point? What could someone like her, a worthless garbage picker, hope to accomplish in a situation like this?

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she was still aware that her mind was being manipulated, but somehow that didn't seem to matter. She knew that it wasn't real, but she was too stupid, too weak, too pathetic to do anything about it. She was going to fail. It was inevitable. She would always fail at everything. Forever.

And there was also the pain. She felt so consumed by sadness that it literally hurt. She hunched over, legs going wobbly at the knees, as if physically weakening.

But the next thoughts seemed to have a different flavor. A bittersweetness in place of a sour sting. If there was no point to any of this, she should just give up.

Yes, that was the sensible thing to do. Just give up. Just stop fighting. She'd been fighting for so long. So so long. She should just rest.

Rest. Just lay down and rest. It would all be over soon. Just rest.

Rey slowly fell to her knees, there was no need to stand anymore. Just lay down and rest. Just rest. Just rest.

But then, amidst the toxic thoughts, she heard a voice. Faint and ethereal. The same word, again and again, but difficult to make out. It sounded just like the voices she'd heard when she'd first touched that cursed lightsaber. The voices that, Master Skywalker had told her, belonged to people who were not alive.

But that didn't make sense. This voice wasn't calling her name. It sounded like - it almost sounded like it was saying...

Mother!

Yes, she was almost certain that's what it was saying, and it kept on going, each repetition sounding more and more urgent.

Mother! Mother!

How could that be possible? Could it be her own dead mother? But that made no sense, either. Or - was it possible that the voice belonged not to someone who was dead, but someone who wasn't yet alive? Someone who didn't yet exist, and yet had already left their footprints in the Force. Little footprints. She felt like the answer was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite grasp it, her mind still clouded by despair.

Mother please!

And from somewhere deep inside, the summoned the will to fight, even if she couldn't quite consciously understand why. She just knew that she couldn't give up now. That wasn't who she was. She had to fight it, but fighting it not with a stave or a lightsaber, but the way she used to on all of those cold, lonely nights in her old AT-AT. She would reason her way out of it, use intellect to control her emotions.

But she wasn't sure she could, her thoughts were so fuzzy and slow. So slow. And - she still felt so tired and physically weak. For a moment, she felt as if she might topple over, but instinctually, one arm flew out to brace herself against the nearest object - the arm of an undead guard.

Her eyes widened. Her mind cleared. Suddenly, she no longer felt the need to rid herself of the despair.

Because it was gone. Vanished in a flash of glorious lucidity and cautious optimism. Intellect restored, her mind raced to analyze her situation. The despair must have disappeared for a reason, and she had to figure out what that was, and how to use it to her advantage.

She stood up straighter, and released the Bogan guard's arm. But as soon as she had, she felt that suffocating sadness, rushing in as if though an open airlock. Then she re-grabbed the arm, and it was gone again.

So that's how this worked...

"Touch them!" Rey screamed. She looked up over the creature's shoulder, trying to see how Kylo was fairing.

She felt a pang of pity when she caught sight of him. If she'd been faring badly, he'd apparently been faring much worse. He was surrounded by undead guards, literally curled up in a quivering ball on the floor, head between his hands, tears streaming down his pallid face, features twisted in a look of frantic agony.

It was so pathetic that it was might have even been funny if it wasn't the man she loved that was suffering so acutely.

"Touch them!" she shouted. For a moment, their eyes met, and he managed to respond with a weak shake of the head.

Stubborn fool, she had to make him understand. "Touch them! They're using your own Force empathy against you! If you're cut off from your powers, they can't touch your mind!"

Kylo bit his lip, raising one hand, arm trembling with the strain of even such a small, simple movement. With a twitch, his palm met the nearest creature's ankle. His eyes instantly widened, the pitiful look vanishing from his face.

Satisfied that Kylo was no longer completely helpless, Rey set about the task at hand - these creepy things had to die. Or rather, die again.

Her left hand clamped down around the arm of that particular guard, and she opened her saber with her right, swinging it at the other shambling attackers, cutting clear through two of them and halfway through a third. All three keeled over.

She turned to face the others, still grasping that one guard's arm. She attempted to yank it to the side, allowing her to continue fighting the others. But by then, the one she'd been grabbing seemed to catch on and began to struggle mightily. Rey grunted, desperately trying to maintain her grasp on the guard, lest she lose her will again, swinging it back and forth in a bizarre, gruesome dance.

Just then, she caught another glimpse of Kylo, now on his feet, and mowing down opponents like a boss. But what caught her eye, was the object in his left hand. It only took her a moment to realize that it was the severed foot of a Bogan guard. He'd apparently sliced it off, creating a much more manageable talisman against their creeping despair, and it seemed to be working splendidly. Travel sized for greater convenience.

In that moment, Rey was pretty sure that was the cleverest thing she'd ever heard of, and instantly drew her saber across the forearm of the struggling guard. Free from her grasp, the thing stumbled and fell backwards, leaving its disembodied hand in Rey's grip.

There was no time to ponder just how disgusting this was. She immediately set about dispatching her four remaining attackers. Two were still standing behind her and one was standing in front of her, arms still outstretched, attempting to cast their net of sadness over her, apparently too dumb to realize that it wasn't working.

Rey spun her saber ahead in an wide, elegant figure eight, arching into a shimmering twirl behind her back. All three of them fell to the ground in pieces. That only left the one she'd been grabbing before, now struggling to its feet. Rey stepped into a forward lunge, running the creature through, and then jerking her saber to the side, cutting it in half at the torso for good measure.

All of her attackers lay at her feet in grotesquely twitching heaps, and she tossed the severed hand away in disgust. She turned to check on Kylo again, but he still seemed to be working his way through his own foes, no doubt because he'd had so many more assigned to him. He seemed to notice that Rey was no longer fighting.

"Take him out!" Kylo shouted, gesturing to Snoke with his eyes.

Rey looked to the Supreme Leader, still sitting calmly on his throne, a bland smirk on his face, as if he were a simple spectator without a care in the world.

She strode toward him, saber blazing and ready for the kill. But even as she climbed the steps of the dais, Snoke still just sat there, grinning almost warmly, as if his favorite grandchild was climbing into his lap. Even stranger, that lone guard was still standing behind him, and made no move to protect its master.

Rey reached the top of the stair, Snoke well within the reach of her blade. He wasn't making any attempt to defend himself or flee. Somehow it felt wrong to cut off the head of such a helpless old creature.

"Do it!" Kylo bellowed, slashing through the last of his opponents.

Helpless or not, Snoke had to die. He was the murderer of billions, oppressor of billions more, and he had seduced poor sweet Ben Solo, destroying his family in the process. Rey sucked in a breath, and with a flick of her wrist, her saber bisected the old, wrinkled neck, and the head of Supreme Leader Snoke fell to the floor, rolling almost comically down the steps of his throne.

Rey blinked, noting a very bad feeling about this. It shouldn't have been so easy. Just as her ears caught the sound of Kylo closing down his saber, they also caught the sound of Snoke's ominous, decrepit baritone. For a moment, she thought it was coming from the severed head, but she quickly realized that it was actually emanating from that last Bogan Guard, still standing on the dais.

"Well done girl," it intoned. "You have passed your very first test. You have killed a defenseless old man for your own ambition."

She sort of wanted to argue with him. This wasn't a matter of ambition. It was a matter of good versus evil.

Rey backed down the stairs to stand beside Kylo, and quickly sensed a wave of apprehension from him. Of all the possible outcomes he'd anticipated, Snoke's consciousness migrating into another body was apparently not one of them.

The undead eyes of the last guard turned on her companion. "My compliments on your taste, Kylo. She is indeed worthy of becoming your - "

A ridiculously long, dramatic pause passed, until Snoke said something that surprised exactly no one. "Replacement."

Interestingly, Rey sensed absolutely no shock from Kylo about that latest revelation, but there was definitely still that anxiety. U"Rey, get to the ship. I'll catch up with you," he ordered.

"No!"

"Dammit Rey, just do it!"

"You are not my master!"

"Come now Kylo, I don't have all day," Snoke interjected, his new vessel calmly ambling down the stairs, toward them. "Destroy me. You've intended to take my place, and indeed you shall. Strike me down and I will trade this corpse for yours."

Rey had definitely sensed fear from Kylo Ren before, but never like this. She could feel abject terror washing over him. As if he'd suddenly come face-to-face with his absolute worst nightmare.

"You can't. You don't have the power!" Kylo shouted.

Zombie Snoke shook his head, his tone softening to something almost paternal. "I have been tinkering with your mind since you were little more than a boy. I absolutely have the power to take it over, under the right conditions."

"No," Kylo whispered irrationally.

Snoke continued on. "You shall rule the galaxy, and with the girl at your side."

"You mean my soulless husk," Kylo retorted, backing away, shaking his head with each step.

Snoke chuckled. "What makes you think that you have any soul? After all you have done?"

Kylo glanced at Rey. "I have enough of a soul left to know that I don't want yours, Snoke."

"Well then," Zombie Snoke began, producing a lightsaber from each sleeve, opening them into bright red blades. Tonfa-style, Rey noticed, her inner sabersmith intrigued in spite of herself.

"Face me, Kylo."

Even as he radiated a sense of fear and fury, Kylo stood there, his own saber still closed and cold. Rey found that she was actually rather impressed by her companion's self-control, thus far. But at the same time, she could also sense that his aggression was held back only by the barest thread of logic.

"Don't let him bait you," she whispered, giving voice to intuition. Snoke clearly wanted to fight him, and there must have been a reason for that, almost certainly having to do with this intention to take over Kylo's body.

"Give in Kylo," Zombie Snoke urged. "The girl will be so much easier to control when I become you. And think of the power your spawn will have! With the right reproductive technology, the girl could be kept in-pup at all times. I could create a small army of Force users. And they will all belong to me!"

And then, Rey literally felt that thread snap.

"NO!" Kylo's new saber ignited in a burst of red-black, and he charged the undead tyrant with a bellow of rage.

"Stop! Stop!" Rey shrieked, both in his mind and aloud. Of course, there was no response; he was too beside himself with wrath. "Idiot!" she added. Couldn't he see that this was what Snoke wanted? Was he not paying attention to Snoke's implication that they would have to both be dead for this to work?

Fortunately, Snoke was so confident in his own ability to manipulate Kylo Ren's emotions, that he was actually parrying each strike. Or perhaps Snoke was trying to arrange things so they would deliver fatal blows to each other simultaneously. Who knew with those weird Sith rituals. Either way, Rey knew that it would be a matter of moments...

Only her Jedi training kept her from outright panicking. She glanced around the room, mainly looking for the closest exit. Perhaps she could Force-faint Kylo and drag him away?

But then she noticed a pair of dead Bogan Guards on the floor at her feet, and she heard the gist of Kylo's explanation echo in her mind. They are a vacuum in the Force. Touch them, and your ability to manipulate the Force will vanish completely. And I'm talking all powers, telekinetic, mental, everything... Rey reached out a hand in the direction of the two corpses. She sensed that cold, emptiness. Of course that property remained after they'd been killed. They were already dead to begin with.

A plan crystallized in her mind almost instantaneously - if Snoke's Force powers were disabled, he probably couldn't possess Kylo's body. She reached out both arms toward the two corpses with the Force, attempting to lift them. Of course, nothing happened - she couldn't touch them with the Force. And then she recalled Kylo's lesson a few days earlier, how he'd wanted her to practice lifting large objects, and it hit her - that was the only way to move the Bogan Guards around, was to do so indirectly, as if lifting something huge. It was really quite fortunate that it occurred to her - that idiot should really have been more clear on the subject.

After all that practice with the enormous, heavy sofa, she should be pretty good at doing that. Without wasting another moment, she grasped hold of the ambient Force energy surrounding the corpses, and hoisted them up in the air. And with a massive shove, she hurled both of them at Snoke.

Direct hit! Snoke gave a startled grunt as he went down, pinned prone on the floor under the two corpses.

Kylo seemed startled too, but flustered as he was, he appeared to understand instantly. He immediately rammed his saber downward, skewering the two corpses before driving his blade into zombie Snoke's heart. He then promptly pulled out the blade, and lopped of the Supreme Leader's head in one final stroke.

Rey watched with her heart in her throat, feeling as if she might die of the suspense. She wasn't at all sure exactly how this body-snatching thing worked, so it was entirely possible that Kylo was now possessed anyway.

Or could it have been the opposite? Snoke had arguably made Kylo Ren what he was, so maybe now that he was dead, everything would change. The evil wizard had been defeated, so perhaps the enchanted prince was now free of his curse! Perhaps the dark mantle that was Kylo Ren would disappear, revealing that perfect, fantasy Ben Solo!

Rey continued to watch as Kylo Ren let out a howl of rage, and began to slash the pile of corpses into smoldering, gory ribbons, and once that was done, he proceeded to stomp on the remains. He was so clearly beside himself with anger that she half-expected him to piss on it.

He was clearly not behaving like a cold, calculating tyrant nor a sassy-but-morally-pure human confection. This had all the earmarks of a good-old-fashioned Kylo Ren hissy fit. He was still himself.

Next time: I love you; I know

Some of my Australian readers have pointed out that Bogan is Australian slang for redneck. While that's not what I was going for (the Bogan Force as the Dark Side is now canon, mentioned in Rebels), I fully embrace the notion. If you're bored, I encourage you to read this chapter again, picturing Snoke's guards not as zombies or space Dementors, but as drunk, mullet-wearing rednecks.