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"She wears strength
and darkness equally well,
the girl has always been
half goddess, half hell."
-Nikita Gill
Rey
"You...but it can't be..."
This isn't possible. She cannot be here. She was only a construct of my psyche, she isn't real.
A razor's smile reflected in the bloody light of her saber, cruelly mocking. She's dressed in black, the hood of her dress framing her face.
Sharp cheekbones and lips stained like blood. Golden eyes stare back with malicious glee.
There is almost a terrifying beauty about her, a dark glamour to her existence.
I feel her power pressing against my skin. She could shape the galaxy as she pleased, mold it to her will and planets would fall before her in blind adoration.
"Poor Rey you sound so confused. Let me help you."
Sweetly poisonous words drip from her lips as she steps towards me and I stumble back, barely holding onto the wayfinder.
"Get away from me!"
My heart is pounding, I feel sick to my stomach and my hands are shaking. All of the anger I felt earlier is gone.
Nothing remains but terror as I face this demon who wears my face.
"Come now, is that any way to treat me? After all I did give you what you wanted."
She points her saber at the wayfinder I now hold in my hand and I clench it tight.
"You did nothing! I found it!"
"Still lying to yourself." Her lips curl back into a sneer, "No Rey it was my voice that has been calling to you. I'm the reason you found the wayfinder. I'm the reason...you have any power at all."
She snaps out her duel lightsaber and it extends into a replica of my staff I used to carry.
But far more deadly.
"Now take my hand and claim your birthright. Together we will destroy Palpatine and take our place on the Sith Throne. We shall build a new empire from his bones."
"Never! I will never be a Sith!"
She stares at me, eyes wide and throws back her head, a vicious laugh tearing from her throat.
"You've already begun you naïve girl!"
Her laughter ceases and cruel eyes no longer mock me. She regards me with disappointment.
"Lies are only useful when they serve a purpose. Lying to yourself serves no purpose, it only makes you weak!"
Anger burns in my gut at her words, overriding my terror her presence has caused.
"I am not weak! I don't need you!"
I drop the wayfinder and snap out my saber, the blue light pushing against the dark.
"I am a Jedi and I'm not afraid of you!"
I run at her, saber raised but she deflects me with a sneer on her lips and a flick of a wrist.
"You dare attack me? I am the reason we are still alive!"
I don't listen to her words my focus narrowed to a single a thought.
Defeating her.
I pivot and slam my saber across her staff intending to break it and show her who is the stronger.
A blood-red smile revealing pointed teeth when her saber unlocks and catches my blade between the two halves.
"Give it up Rey. You cannot win. I know everything about you."
Her staff twists, snatching the saber from my hands but I drop and roll coming up behind her and catch it mid-air.
She's already turning and it's all I can do to defend myself. Everything I do to deflect, she counters.
It is like trying to fight a mirror.
She lifts her hand and Force-shoves me across the room.
My ankle catches a fallen cable and I stumble barely stopping myself from falling.
She stalks me, her gown patterned after Ren's armor.
Ren.
My chest burns and I don't understand this terribly yearning I have and blindly reach for him.
The scent of ice, a kiss of lightning inside my mind and I take a deep breath, my lungs no longer constricted by fear.
She stops meters from me, eyes narrowed in cold contemplation.
"I know all your thoughts...your feelings...join me and you will have what you desire most."
"You don't know anything about me! You know nothing of my desires!"
"You desire Kylo Ren."
I stumble back, frantically denying her words in my heart. I don't want him!
Ice and lightning disappear and the sensation of being smothered returns twofold. Anger and fear churn in my gut and I strike at her with the only weapon I have left. My words.
"No! No! I...he...we're enemies! He is a Sith and I am a Jedi!"
"You are no Jedi, you foolish girl! Deep down you know what you are."
"Stop it!"
But she doesn't and continues to torment me with her accusations.
"Quit fighting it Rey. You've always been drawn to the darkness. Remember Ahch-To and the cave. Skywalker sensed the darkness in you and that's why he refused to further your training. Isn't that why you turned to Kylo? He never turned from you. He wasn't afraid of your darkness."
My saber loose in my grip and I close my eyes, desperate to refute her words but I can't.
Because it's true. All of it.
He never turned me away. It didn't scare him like it did Skywalker. It didn't make him hesitate to teach me sometimes the way Leia would during our training.
"I...I..."
Nails scrapping across my cheek, her touch cold as death on my face. My back to a wall and I can't escape.
"Join me and I will give you your hearts desire." Cajoling words that make my soul tremble, "The rule of an empire...and an Emperor to stand at your side!"
Her words jolt me out of my paralysis.
I never wanted to rule the galaxy.
It's why I refused to take Ren's hand on the Supremacy.
Why I've stayed with the Resistance all this time instead of...
"You have nothing I want!"
I shove her away and snatch the wayfinder at my foot, my other hand gripping the hilt of my saber to defend myself.
"I will never join you!"
Golden eyes fill with venomous hatred as the iris turns black.
"Then you will die! That is the fate of all Jedi who stand against the Sith!"
She bares her teeth at me and our blades clash as sparks fill the air.
"I will take your life and I will take Kylo Ren! He's mine!"
Her words send a haze of red across my vision, a surge of jealousy that he might prefer her to me.
"You can't have him!" I slash at her saber, shoving her back with my own power, "I won't let you!"
Her feral, vicious laughter fills the air and she lifts her hand towards me.
"You can't stop me...because you are me!"
"NO!"
But it's too late and I'm shoved back through the door when it opens and crash into the ground.
The wind knocked out of me and I can't breathe. The wayfinder tumbles from numb fingers and I see it sliding across the water-slick floor.
If it goes over the edge I will lose it forever and my only hope of revenge.
I'm grasping for the Force when a black, gloved hand slams down on top of it.
My chest burning, my lungs aching I get to my knees and stare up into the shattered eyes of Kylo Ren.
Now I understand the secondary presence in the back of my mind this entire time.
The strange double vision I had before I entered the vault.
He followed me even though I told him to stay away. He's been tracking me, using our bond the same way I used my connection to the wayfinder.
He hasn't spoken and the weight of his regard is nearly tangible on my skin as I slowly get on my feet.
There is no mask to cover his face but I cannot read him at all.
The wayfinder is in his hand.
Languid heat in my blood, the voice of my shadow-self loud in my mind, I regard this man who has chased me across a galaxy.
Anticipation leaping in my veins as simmering resentment brushes dark fire along my nerves.
"What are you doing here Kylo Ren? I thought I told you to stay away from me."
Is he that eager to die by my hand?
A flicker in midnight and I hear the sound of leather against metal as his hand tightens around the wayfinder.
"I take orders from no one. Not even you Rey."
It feels like a lifetime since I heard his voice. Silken and cold, an edge of darkness that wraps around me and I shiver slightly.
In anticipation.
This man is in a dangerous mood.
Well so am I and I didn't come this far to back down now.
"Give that to me," I stare into shadowed obsidian and feel myself drowning, "it's mine."
He arches a single eyebrow, a laconic glaze in his eyes.
"Is that right?"
A dark murmur from his lips and my blood quickens in response. I feel as though I'm dancing with lighting, staring into the abyss and I can't understand why I thought the darkness in him was something to be feared.
"Don't test me Ren. I want the wayfinder. Now."
I see him shiver, watch his throat work as he swallows and a rush of cruel pleasure infuses my veins.
For a moment I wonder what it would take to put the most powerful man in the galaxy on his knees before me.
"What will you do with it?"
He holds up the pyramid by the base and my eyes devour it. Already the light begins to flicker and the whispers return.
Revenge...revenge...
"I will go to Exegol and take my revenge on the emperor for all the hurt he's caused me."
He will pay with his life for the death of my parents. For all my suffering and hardship.
When he is dead I will be free.
"Then why did you come here Rey?"
His question snaps me out of the daze I seem to have fallen in.
"Excuse me?"
He moves a step closer, his boots crunching the gravel beneath his heel and in the silence it echoes like thunder.
"If all you wanted was revenge," His eyes pull me in and I can't look away, "then you should have stayed with me."
I bare my teeth at him.
"The emperor is mine to kill. You would have tried to stop me!"
Just like all the other's. No one will ever understand what that man did to me. All of my pain, my suffering is because of him.
He has to die and I have to be the one to do it.
I light my saber and hear the hum of the blade.
"Enough," I cut him off before he can say another word, "give that to me. I won't ask you a third time."
"Are you going to kill me Rey?"
His placid tone infuriates me. He should be afraid to die by my hand. I beat him on Starkiller Base and I will the do the same here.
"If you force me, yes. I want it now."
A subtle shift of light in his gaze and he's shaking his head at me.
"You sound like a Sith. What would my mother think to see you like this?"
Leia...my heart squeezes and I falter for a second.
The whisper of the wayfinder grows louder, drowning out my hesitation.
Take your revenge...give into your hate...
So long as I kill the emperor I'm not betraying her.
"This isn't about her," I hiss at him, "your tricks and deceptions won't work on me Kylo Ren."
He sighs and once more lifts the wayfinder between us.
"I think this has gone on long enough."
I have no idea what he's talking about until I hear the scream of metal and shattering glass.
"No...NO!"
Ren wrapped the Force around it, destroying the wayfinder in his grip. The Sith relic is nothing but useless debris now.
The feeble glow that I had seen is snuffed out completely.
My head is filled with silence. Empty, suffocating silence.
After everything I went through to find it...he destroyed in seconds.
I stare at Ren and rage makes my skin burn.
"How...how dare you!"
"The emperor is manipulating you Rey. He has from the start."
I barely hear his words over the screaming in my head.
My revenge for the death of my parents...he's taken that away from me.
I don't think and run at him, swinging wildly at him with my saber.
"You had no right!"
He ducks and pivots and I miss him entirely.
"I have every right! I won't let you be a tool for Palpatine!"
Blinding rage, my vision veiled in red and blood-lust rising in my veins. I twist and aim for his neck.
A flash of crimson light as he meets my saber with his own.
"I hate you!"
I hear his gasp, his grip falter and I take another swing at him.
He drops and sweeps his leg out, knocking me off my feet.
I'm back on them seconds later but Ren is gone.
I see him dropping through a hole in the ground that leads to the sub-levels.
He's leaving and I give a wordless scream of rage and go after him.
I will make him pay for what he's done!