Force Destiny

The Droid

Kylo stood, his hands clasped behind his back, as a Kyber crystal taller than him was lowered into a chamber in the floor. Force Destiny. At least, it would be, soon enough. It was in a well-guarded room, behind three code-secured blast doors, in the highest classified section of Weapons Development. A quick skim of a Bothan contractor's mind – an expendable liability who would likely "go missing" after he finished his top-secret assignment – revealed that Hux outdid himself with redundancies. The largest obstacle Kylo discovered was that the majority of the controls for the machine were housed on the Command Bridge rather than in the room itself. Kylo screwed his eyes shut as a wave of fear crashed through him. Even as the most powerful man in the galaxy, he still had no command over what happened. There were too many redundancies, even with the assistance of the Force. With Hux's distrust, he would be executed for treason long before he was able to destroy the machine.

I can't stop it.

As his emotions began to spiral, Kylo had enough sense to download the schematics of the machine onto his holopad before he was lost to the control of his fear or the darkness, whichever one consumed him first. Would there ever be a moment when his emotions didn't control him? Would there ever be a moment when he had control over anything? All he wanted was peace; freedom from the fetters that bound him, that dragged him down into an ever-constant state of emotional drowning. Other Force-sensitives possessed the Force. Whether it was the light or the darkness, the Force possessed him.

Approaching the end of the corridor, he should have turned right to make his way back to his quarters. As the fear inside him escalated, he found himself turning left. He had no plan of where he wanted to go, he simply felt drawn to follow that path. It wasn't often that he allowed himself to surrender to the will of the Force; instead, he would fight it for the sake of fighting. Not this time. The nightmares kept him awake, food was repulsive, a permanent ache had taken up residence in his chest, the fear and anger that fed the darkness were slowly consuming him alive, and his master would return. Nothing had changed since he had come into power; nothing was better. He couldn't find it in himself to care, so he let the Force guide him to wherever it pushed him to go, even if it was down a maintenance shaft.

I can't do this anymore.

Kylo hated ships. He had always wanted to be a pilot, but with the Force, he found it impossible. On world, if his emotions unraveled, he could find a secluded place to "discharge" them; but on a ship? His only option was controlled destruction, or he'd blast a hole in the ship with the Force. His father had been too nervous to fly with him as he grew older, and for that – and that alone – he didn't blame him. It was simple physics to understand what a hole in a ship would do in the vacuum of space.

Kylo's emotions were always volatile, but right now they were at their worst. A violent reaction was inevitable. An ever-strengthening voice in his head made the argument for allowing the Force to blow a hole in the ship. If it was a strategic enough placement, the entire destroyer could implode, bringing Force Destiny down with it. His master could never return, and Kylo would be at peace.

He had never considered the option of taking his own life before. Granted, he never valued his life – why would he when no one else did – nor was he particularly fearful of his inevitable fate, but he hadn't considered it. He'd fought too hard to survive Luke's attack to waste the opportunity for revenge. Even as a boy, he had trouble believing he would live to see his thirtieth standard year. It was a milestone that was swiftly approaching, and even now he hadn't considered that he would reach it. He often found himself complacent toward his own mortality, or even invincible, due to a litany of close calls that had desensitized him.

Still, he'd never considered taking fate into his own hands, that is, not until he killed his father. Then Luke died, and his strongest reason to survive died with him. That seemed like a good enough reason as any to end it all. No one would know the evil he prevented from being unleashed upon the galaxy, but Kylo never cared much for fame anyway. He found himself walking toward the stern of the ship, approaching the power and propulsion center.