They say Death walks these sands at night.

Past the Sindillis Basin and into the wastelands of the deep desert. Where the winds howl like crying children. Where a woman's laughter echoes like a haunting siren's call. They say Death rules this place. That over a thousand years ago he chased the spark of Life that had made it a paradise and took up residence himself. Some say he came to punish. Others that he came to mourn. And, if you find one or two especially ardent believers, they will tell you something entirely different:

That he searches for his love.

No one knows the whole story but, like so many others, they all seem to go the same way. That a long time ago Death stumbled upon his love and she was cruelly taken from him. Vanished, so that he could not find her; some say back from whence she came. They would be wrong, of course. Yet sagacity gives way to melodrama, in the usual attempt of trying to make a good story that much better.

And so now they say Death stalks the sands at night, angry and ever-searching. That he is the reason nothing grows here and the reason it never will. For his Love is gone and will not return, and that is why he must kill—because it is his nature, yes, but also because her loss has driven him to do such terrible things. And this is the reason why we must fear him, like primitives in terror of a vengeful God.

As stories go, it is certainly not bad and does serve an instructive purpose—that yes, this land is barren for a reason, and no, no one should ever walk into the desert at night.

But by all other intents, it is total drek and should be regarded as such. Look closer, and you will find the grains of truth that are hidden—that yes, Death does in fact walk these sands at night, and yes, of course it has to do with love.

(It always has to do with love.)

Look closer still. There is no mourning to be found here. The children are not crying but peaceful in a Force-induced sleep. And there is no woman's haunting laughter for she lies silent and pale in Death's strong arms.

He sinks them both into a pool of steaming mineral water and waits for her to wake up. She is exhausted from the hunger of his passion for her, made worse by long months apart. Yet there is something else that causes her unresponsiveness. She has held for too long their youngest (a child not of their bodies but of their hearts) and, for a moment, Death fears that his Love has been irretrievably careless. It is just as the night when she first found their son, screaming across the Force from the other side of Jakku, where he clung to the dead husk of what had been his birth-mother. A tiny creature saddled with unspeakable power—scared and hungry and alone.

It is for this reason that Life clings to the child so tightly and why Death must use his own gifts to keep her alive. She knows what it is to suffer and be abandoned, to experience loss and go without, and it is why she will never run dry of that which every living creature thirsts for.

This is why I love you, Death thinks, surveying her faded skin and placing his large hand to her soft belly. Just as he did that day seven years prior, in the ruins of an ancient temple and the heart of a forest that she had grown from nothing, he seeks to remove the poison—whether it be radiation from the core of a dying planet or the overwhelming Force power of an infant. His gift is to absorb the pain and the wrong. His wife—this precious Life—glows gold and warms in his arms. She opens her eyes and smiles at him.

Death does indeed walk these sands at night, but he no longer walks alone.

I am increasingly convinced that there is no inherent morality of the Force. It is as immutable as the universe itself; it does not bend to virtue, nor corrupt to evil. The virtue or lack lies in its possessor, a hell or paradise to make—

Have you ever read the works of Bastila Shan? They are enough to silence the dead.

Death lies sleeping, his bed a rather tatty yellow sofa, though the one who found it loves it dearly. She sits beside him wearing Death's robes, or an equally tatty and too-large black sweater to be precise. Death is in a state of exhaustion. Perhaps it is the ancient Jedi's words or perhaps it was the second bout of lovemaking that occurred in the heat of their shared mineral bath.

Life is not tired. She is restless. There are words inside her head and on the page and she needs a willing partner with whom to share them. Still, she will not wake him now. This exhaustion has built not just over a day but for the last seven years. She vows that she will let him sleep more. She prays that they will not be parted again.

Left to her solitary reading, she curls against the cool pillow of Death's body. She readjusts the wire frames that balance on her nose. Even Life is not immune to certain consequences, and bleeding out the pigment from one's eyes has turned out to be particularly degenerative.

Still, she will always be moved by the fragile text that she holds. A text that dates back nearly three thousand millennia and recounts the life of a Jedi exiled due to her radical beliefs. Sent to the far reaches of the galaxy, this Jedi met her match in a creature of the Sith.

Some tales are romantic. Some are tragic. Some are both.

Life feels this most acutely. Flowers spring from the sofa where she sits (though they do not last long in the places that Death lies).

There is another tale that Life has never written. Of a girl who came from nothing and was found by a boy descended from royalty. This girl went on to save a world. She saved a great many souls. Yet her deeds would not be remembered kindly. Life can also equate with destruction, you see.

61,874.

If she wrote her story, perhaps that is what she would call it. It is a number known throughout the galaxy, the scale by which its peace must be balanced.

It is the number of souls who perished aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer Courage, dragged to the surface of Moraband by the very being who would go on to save it.

There was a time when this sin was overlooked. The galaxy was preoccupied by rebuilding and Death had put back on his Emperor's robes (for the days of tatty sweaters still awaited).

Life only remembers so much. The love of her husband and her friends, the ways in which she was cared for and protected. Then the days that came later. The terror of an innocent maid, unprepared for the sight that Life now presented. The accusations of the deformed courtier named Wylde. She had known him in the time before his face and heart had become disfigured. But hate, like the well of love, may turn bottomless too. Her kind was marked for condemnation. Those Gods that relied on the Force would be the ones to destroy everybody else.

These are not happy memories. The flowers grow denser in Life's ruminations, frosty blue nightshades whose faces reflect the somber mood of their creator. How the ancient Jedi understood her struggle. For even those without the Force can make a hell or paradise all on their own.

Like the ancient Jedi, Life chose a kind of exile as well. A self-imposed prison, though she was with child, and Death beat on its walls, in grief and rage combined at what had come to pass. A trial was planned. Life's dearest friends were all threatened. Even the brave princess and her knight, the latter being forced to flee Coruscant with their young son. Those of the Force were no longer welcome nor safe. It was only through the (mostly) selfless offer of marriage by a famed Resistance pilot that the heartbroken princess was saved.

Life waited in her crystal tomb. The changing colors of the walls tracked her moods, though time felt immaterial. There are stories like this and they end in heroic rescues, or so she has been told. For Death broke in and stole her away in the middle of the night. (There were also many other players who at the time she did not recall; they included her conniving mother-in-law and a once arch-nemesis turned ally named Hux.) Life woke up safe and sound in a lava-filled castle. Angry and soon in labor and then—

Their first child was born. Han. In the name of the father of the father.

And so, a deal was made. The girl went back to her childhood home of Nowhere. The boy went back to take a lesser throne. To seven years' hard labor, and the promise that he would be the girl's eternal keeper; that never again would she be allowed to wreak havoc upon the worlds.

Life sighs as Death stirs beneath her. The happy stories are few. The tragic endings are only if you do not know the entire truth.

Death sees the flowers. They shrivel beneath his hand.

"Do you regret it?" Life asks him, a question she has been avoiding the better part of these past seven years.

Death shakes his head. "Do you?" He communicates further via the bond that they share, reminds her that her sacrifice was much greater, that he was rewarded with a redemption he does not deserve while her name has become a curse.

Life considers his words. She ponders for a time. She thinks of those she has harmed and those who have harmed her. She thinks of the well-worn notebook kept by her bed, filled with the names and hopes and dreams of the almost sixty-two thousand souls lost; her life's work to be their keeper, to help those left behind.

"No," she tells him. The galaxy is meant to move on without us. The spell had to be broken and, if this is what's required of me, I do not regret it. It does not change us, you and I.

In truth, it sets us free.

There are new stories now:

Of a man called Ben and a woman called Rey lying together in shallow slumber. Dawn breaking and four children barging in, along with a pair of droids carrying the burnt offerings of what is breakfast. The children laughing and climbing on their parents' bed, the eldest and his best friend arguing over the unwritten rules of pirates while the girl curls up against her father's side and the youngest seeks out his mother's arms. Jam is smeared and blackened toast is shared and the man carefully keeps a hand to his wife's back so this time she is spared from any harm.

The morning is joyous, though the man and woman are tired. It is only when the man's mother appears and ushers the children out that the rest the two are longing for can finally be attempted.

Yet something prickles the senses of both, a quiet humming at first only audible to those attuned to the Force. The noise grows louder. It is oddly familiar and yet? Just as that time when they had lain in a Sith Lords' tomb and the ghosts had proclaimed:

Count!

One, two! One, two!

Not theirs and another but—

One, two.

One. Two.

Two new flickers in the Force.

"You've got to be kriffing kidding me," the woman says. She clamps a hand over her mouth, now shaking with laughter and tears. The man stares wide-eyed; he leans down to press his cheek to her stomach.

Twins.

"Holy fuck."

New life. New lives. What will they entail?

There are more stories to come. Of a green-eyed boy with unwavering calm and a black-haired girl whose resolve will shake the galaxy. Of an eldest son not so powerful in the Force but wanting to live up to the human legacy of his namesake. Of a beloved daughter steeped in Darkness and in kindness both, for she has learned from her father just how well the two can coexist. Of a formidable warrior named after another like him, who searches the stars until his own elusive belonging can be found.

For now, the man called Ben and the woman called Rey must wait. And so must we. The galaxy is too old and too big to focus on but a single story. It is time to move on, dear friends.

May the Force be with you all.

- THE END -