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IN the eye of a hurricane, there's a haunting kind of silence. A moment of calm, tranquility, before the evident catastrophe. You feel at peace for a mere second, and that's enough to keep your breathing normal as you're blasted into oblivion.
Raena wondered when she would feel that silence again. She experienced the hurricane when her parents died, and she had to get up and brave the storm. The hurricane came again when she died, when Kylo Ren twisted that saber right through her chest, and as her skin cauterized, she heard the silence. Everything was so peaceful as she fell on the floor and all the oxygen left, before her body awoke what felt like seconds later. The next hurricane was imminent. She hoped she could survive another.
Hux was dead. Gerardo and Pacey had deflected and escaped with the Resistance. Raena was left on the Steadfast with no allies or friends. All she had now was eyes watching her every move, waiting for her to explode. She knew what happened on Kijimi was a good thing – Hux had to die; her friends had to leave – but that didn't mean she wasn't struggling with her own obvious loneliness. How could she endure this war alone?
Leia's voice echoed through her ears again and it filled her with a sense of hope that she hadn't felt in a very, very long time. She tended to do that to people. You're never alone, she had whispered, and no one's ever really gone. Leia was right. Raena wasn't alone, especially if she had someone like her to count on.
The general's voice moved on a delicate wavelength: You don't need to finish this on your own, she had said. Then what else was there for her? What could Raena's purpose be if not to repay Leia for her kindness, and – somehow, someway – find the same kind of kindness in her own heart, where there had once been darkness.
There is good still left in everyone. Was there, though? She could make the argument that Kylo's was long gone, but she wondered if it was the same for her. If she had no purpose, nothing to repay – who was Raena Nhagy in this war, besides an unkillable assassin? She was just another asset in the army, a face amongst the crowd. She had never liked too much attention, but she almost hoped that her name would go down in the history books. Raena Nhagy – last of her family, a revolutionary hero. But fate had an entirely different plan, and kept twisting her left and right.
Was she simply bound to Kylo for eternity, until he, eventually, withered away and died? If she couldn't end this war and use her past relationship with him to her advantage, then nothing else mattered. She might as well deflect and live out the rest of her days in hiding, refusing to acknowledge either side, and searching the galaxy for a cure to her serum. This couldn't be her future. She wouldn't allow it to be, and she'd be damned if she had to spend another year faking loyalty for a deranged leader.
The only way to answer all her questions, sadly, was the worst fate of all. Raena Nhagy had to follow Kylo Ren to the end of this war, or it would all be for nothing. She was going to finish this.
