Part 2: Dreams

Vader

For more than twenty years, the Jedi have been all but destroyed, their light—as one of the Emperor's late servants eloquently pointed out—gone from the galaxy. There have been survivors, those who evaded the infamous Order 66; Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, until recently, were both at large. Even former Jedi like the late Ahsoka Tano or Kanan Jarrus managed to remain one step ahead of the Empire, watering the seeds of what would one day become the Rebel Alliance—but as Master Yoda himself was fond of saying, all things have their time. More precisely—as Obi-Wan once told a young Anakin Skywalker—everything dies.

Even the stars burn out.

First it was Ahsoka Tano, sacrificing herself to save who she thought was her former teacher, although unbeknownst to her he had perished long before that on the fiery world of Mustafar. After that came Obi-Wan Kenobi, who resurfaced just in time to help stymie the Empire's greatest weapon, the Death Star—and who had ultimately suffered the same fate as the weapon he gave his life to help destroy. Soon, the Empire would find others; the padawans, knights, and masters who were still unaccounted for would either cower before the Emperor's servants or would be already dead, killed either by their efforts for the Rebel Alliance or merely by time. Perhaps Yoda himself would meet such a fate—the wizened old master was approaching his 900th birthday, after all—sparing the Empire the effort of putting an end to his miserable existence.

But even then, the Jedi Order would not be dead. Not entirely. First of all, there was one who had emerged from the ranks of the Rebellion—the boy who had delivered the fatal blow to the Death Star—who was most likely receiving Jedi training, though he was clearly too young to have been a survivor of the old Order. No, this boy—this child, really—was part of something new, a New Order that had risen out of the ashes of the old. He was a gateway between two worlds: trained most likely by the Jedi of old, but carrying the Order toward a new horizon, to places not yet reached.

Secondly, the Jedi will continue to stalk the dreams of a handful of beings for more than 60 years after they vanished from the galaxy.

Darth Vader is one of those beings.

Although he usually forgets them once he is awake, Vader's dreams are flooded by the memories of long-lost Jedi, like wraiths haunting him in the night. Some are Jedi he merely knew, such as Luminara Unduli, Kit Fisto, or even Yoda himself, the latter reminding him that "Fear leads to anger" as if it was not already too late to steer the late Anakin Skywalker from his fated path. Others are those whose deaths he played a hand in, though he himself never delivered the coup de grace, the final blow; Mace Windu, Yaddle, Ahsoka Tano, all the Jedi who were lost in the storm that was Order 66. Then there are the Jedi he personally, deliberately killed: the younglings in the temple, Cin Drallig, Obi-Wan Kenobi...

And his first kill: Anakin Skywalker.

He was not the first to die, certainly; the first Vader would strike down was the Gatekeeper of the Jedi Temple, a frail old man he wouldn't have otherwise bothered with if the fool hadn't been in his way. But he was the first Jedi to whom Vader dealt the killing blow. As Anakin watched Mace Windu raise his amethyst blade, preparing to deliver the fatal strike to the very embodiment of the dark side, Vader had made his move, had sliced through what was left of the young Jedi's heart. It had taken him a while to die, yes, since Anakin hadn't truly died until Vader reached through the Force to strangle Padme—an act Skywalker never would have made. In the end, however, there was no denying it: Anakin Skywalker would always be Vader's first Jedi kill.

Because of this, Anakin will sometimes walk in Vader's dreams, though he does not appear as often as the others do. In fact, Vader rarely sees Anakin; he can count on one hand the number of times the young Jedi has made an appearance in the last two decades. The Emperor, after all, has been careful to sever any ties Vader had to his old life, encouraging him to take revenge on Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, or any other figure from his past. Perhaps, as Vader muses when he is at his weakest, the Emperor in some way manipulated his apprentice into killing Padme. It is not impossible or, as Vader realizes in lucid moments, even improbable. It was the Emperor, after all, who had planted those first seeds of doubt into Vader's mind, had caused him to question Padme's fidelity. Had made him wonder if Obi-Wan had become the Padme's new center of attention. The doubt had possessed just enough credibility to be true: Obi-Wan had indeed secretly visited Padme on a few occasions. And Padme had been withholding secrets from him—but not for the reasons he initially expected. Indeed, all of his suspicions turned out to be unfounded in the end: Obi-Wan had visited Padme to privately voice some of his fears about Anakin, about how he felt his friend was slipping away from them all; and Padme had been keeping her involvement in what would later become the Rebel Alliance a secret from the one person she feared would inform the Emperor-to-be of their plans. But those doubts, as ridiculous as they had been, were enough to convince Vader that Obi-Wan's arrival on Mustafar had been Padme's doing—that she had, as Vader himself had said, brought him there to kill Anakin.

That was the day Vader truly began hating the Emperor.

It was also the first time in long while that Vader—or anyone—would feel the light side stir in its decades-long slumber.

Kylo Ren

No one had been so bold as to say it to his face or in his presence, but Kylo Ren knew that the higher officers of the First Order viewed his obsession with the late Darth Vader as pathetic—even adolescent. Admiring—perhaps even worshipping—a famous figure was something children did, after all; they chattered on about a sports star, a holo-film celeb, some hero from the Rebellion. Ren knew because he done the same thing as a child, pinning up posters of his favorite pod-racing champions to the walls of his room, exchanging bolo-ball trading cards with the few real friends a child of two of the most famous and recognizable persons in the galaxy could have. And yes, he did admit that it was pathetic, becoming engrossed in a person he had never met, had no real connection with. It was like befriending a painting, in a way—forming a bond with something that never could truly bond with you.

His relationship with Darth Vader was different than this.

Although he hadn't known it at the time, Ren had encountered Vader early in his life. In fact, the first encounter Ren can remember occurred when he was five, although he hadn't realized the man he'd come to think of as an imaginary friend was actually one of the most powerful Sith Lords of all time. This was because man he had seen—the man who had watched over him at night like a sentinel, or observed his padawan training with a small but approving smile—hadn't been dressed as Vader, or even looked like a Sith. Like someone evil. Instead, Ren's imaginary friend was clad in dark Jedi robes similar to the ones his uncle wore, so he had always assumed the man was a sort of guardian Jedi spirit, a friendly ghost sent to watch over his training. It hadn't been until a few years ago that Ren had learnt that his friendly spirit and the Empire's most brutal enforcer had been the same person—or that he was, in fact, related to that man.

When Ren became aware of the truth—that Darth Vader was indeed his grandfather—his entire worldview had shifted. From childhood, he had been taught that the only viable path was to embrace the ways of the Jedi, dedicating himself to altruism and the purity of the light side. The dark side, on the other hand, was to be avoided; it afforded great power, yes, but at a great cost. His uncle had told him of how it could make the greatest men fall, corrupt them with evil so base and despicable that it defied words. The dark side was, as his uncle claimed, what created evil, was the source from which it flowed. Everything bad in the universe—pain, war, death—came from it, while everything good—pleasure, peace, life—stemmed from the light side. That was why the Jedi served it, his uncle had told him; dedicating oneself to the light side made it stronger, better able to win the incessant war it waged against the dark. And whichever side one would, ultimately, be the one that decided what the universe was like—for better or for worse.

But when he had begun researching his grandfather, Ren had realized this view of the Force had been woefully simplistic. He had been right in thinking there were two opposing sides of the Force, two halves of one whole battling each other in a struggle that had gone on since the creation of the universe itself. Even the dogmatic, sanctimonious Jedi of the Clone Wars era—including his grandfather and his uncle's mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi—had been aware of this truth, although they had been blind to so much else. Where he had been wrong was in his belief that light side needed to prevail in this struggle, naively assuming it would be best for the galaxy. It was true that good things did indeed flow from the light side, as it allowed new life, enjoyment, and love to exist—but like parents were fond of reminding their children, it was possible for there to be too much of a good thing. Too much darkness was bad, of course, as the Empire had so eloquently proven. But it was just as bad—just as dangerous—to have too much light. Have a bright enough light, and everyone would be blind.

Just like a world with too much darkness.

That was why the Jedi Order had fallen: Their dominance had thrown the Force out of balance. The light side was too strong, had been that way for decades—even centuries. Since the fall of the Sith on the world Maz Kanata now called home, the light had been stifling everything, and balance had been required. The Jedi, like the Sith, needed to be removed from their pedestal, their place of power.

His grandfather had been the one to do this.

Peering into his grandfather's past, Ren had learnt that before his fall to the Sith, Vader had actually been a Jedi, a light side user. More precisely, he had been a legend—The Hero With No Fear to the people of the Republic, and the long-awaited Chosen One to the Jedi Order. The latter title referred to a centuries-old prophecy—one that predated even the Jedi Order itself—predicting that a powerful Force user would appear to bring balance to the Force, who could bring harmony out of the chaos that had plagued the Force since the moment of creation. Both Jedi, Sith, and non-affiliated Force users such as the Nightsisters had been aware of this prophecy, but being as blind and self-absorbed as they were, the Jedi assumed that the prophecy would unfold in their favor. Balance, in their minds, didn't mean harmony between the two sides of the Force; it merely meant victory of the light side, the triumph of "good." The Sith were no better, seeing the Chosen One simply as an opportunity to snatch power from the Jedi. To exact their long-awaited revenge. But they, in the end, had seen more clearly than the Jedi, recognizing that a balance of the Force required the weakened dark to grow stronger…and the light to grow dimmer.

The Jedi really should have thought harder about the meaning of the word "balance" before they allowed the Chosen One into their ranks.

Some scholars—mostly those from the Church of the Force, a gathering of non Force-sensitive beings who adhered to the teachings of the Jedi—believed that by destroying the Jedi Order, Anakin had fulfilled his destiny as the Chosen One. After all, was it not balance for roughly the same number of Jedi and Sith to be alive at one time—a handful of Jedi matched to the pair of Sith? Perhaps it would have been, if Vader had stopped there. If he had vanquished the Order and simply left it at that. But the trouble was that it hadn't been enough—not for a Sith Lord, who was as obsessed with the accumulation of power as he was with the dark side of the Force. Instead, Vader and his master, Darth Sidious, had continued to amass power until their might surpassed that of the Jedi Order they had so ruthlessly slaughtered, meaning that the Force was once again out of the balance. Only this time, it was the dark rather than the light that had grown too strong.

In the end, Vader had made the right choice, choosing to slay his master at the cost of his own life. And ultimately, Ren believed that that one act had balanced the Force—at least for a time, anyway. With the Jedi and the Sith both gone, the Force had reached a temporary equilibrium, with both the light and dark remaining subdued. Quiet. According to Snoke, all aspects of the Force had been sleeping since then; neither light nor shadow fell upon any Force users, who were all but extinct in the galaxy. It wasn't until his uncle and the New Republic had joined forces, hoping to form an alliance between the government and the New Order, that Snoke had sensed the Force stirring once more. The Force was sleeping, certainly—but only fitfully, and that only due to the fact that his uncle's New Order was beginning to throw the Force out of balance.

The Force was beginning to stir yet again—only this time, Snoke had told him the stirring felt…different. The shifting before had been subtle, quiet, almost negligible. What was happening now, however…if it was warranting Snoke's concern, then it had to be something big. It was so big, in fact—so monumental—that even Ren could sense it, despite the fact that his abilities with the Force were nowhere near as refined as Snoke's.

Ren feared that the shift could only mean further imbalance to the Force.

That fear had driven him to seek guidance from Snoke, but as expected, the older man had failed to give Ren the answers he had been seeking. There was no denying that the Supreme Leader was wise, as well as powerful beyond belief—but often, Ren felt as though Snoke failed to see the small picture, the details. He focused too much on the big picture, what was happening on the grand scale: His eyes looked for wars, changes in regime, stirrings in the Force. Ren, on the other hand, needed to be able to pick out the finer details of life—because ultimately, that was where he stood. More precisely, it was his job, even his destiny. Snoke was concerned about the state of the Force, sifting through its currents to measure its balance; Ren was responsible for taking the necessary actions once there was an imbalance. If his master was a warrior, then he was his sword.

Instead, Ren was now seeking the advice of someone he knew to be far more reliable than Snoke…though he would never dare to say or even think as much in the Supreme Leader's presence.

Ren was seeking guidance from his grandfather.

The Force ghost that visited Ren now was not entirely the same as the one that had visited him when he was small—or even when he had been ignorant of his relation to Vader, only a few standard years ago. What he saw was not entirely different, to be sure; he could still see part of Anakin Skywalker's face, the Jedi's piercing blue eyes boring into Ren's black ones. Now, however, part of that face—and body—was obscured by the image that typically sprang to mind when one thought of Vader: the dark, shell-like suit, helmet, and mask. If not for the sliver of Anakin's face peeking out through the damaged mask, Ren could have almost sworn that he was looking only at Darth Vader, not a conglomeration of the Jedi he had once been with the Sith he had become. Indeed, it didn't look like Anakin was wearing Vader's jet-black suit so much as seemed that Vader was sporting the young Jedi as a façade, a mask. Perhaps that had been what he was along, after all; perhaps Vader had always been there, lurking in the shadows of Anakin Skywalker's heart. At his core, Anakin may have even been Vader from the very start, with Vader using him as a veneer until the Emperor coaxed him out.

Looking at the ghost now, though, Ren could not be sure which side represented his father's true self. Sometimes, he presented himself in the form to which Ren had grown accustomed, with one side appearing as Anakin while the other appeared as Vader. But at other times, his grandfather form would shift, and the balance between his two half would be thrown off. One moment, he would become all Vader, complete with the dark, menacing garb and faceless stare; in another, he was the old, familiar ghost of Anakin Skywalker. In a way, it reminded Ren of the Force, of the age-old struggle between the Ashla and the Bogan—the light and the dark. Perhaps it was even possible that his grandfather's transformations, as visually confusing as they seemed, were actually a reflection of the changes the Force was currently undergoing. After all, it seemed too much of a coincidence for his grandfather's transformations to just "happen" to occur alongside recent memory's largest shift in the Force.

As if reading his thoughts, the eye peeking out from Vader's mask met Ren's own gaze. He seemed to be considering his grandson—or, more precisely, considering what was within his grandson. Ren could feel Anakin/Vader sifting through him, weighing the aspects of his grandson as if he were trying to determine whether or not they were balanced, harmonized. And perhaps he was, given that he, too, had the ability to touch both dark and light.

Just as it always did, his grandfather's voice came directly into his mind, as it was a thought from Ren himself. "You've felt it, haven't you?"

Wearing a helmet not all that dissimilar from Vader's, Ren nodded and bowed his head. "Yes, grandfather. I have sensed the stirring in the Force—the awakening." He paused for a moment before adding cautiously, "Supreme Leader senses it as well."

The Anakin half of his grandfather frowned. "And what does your master plan on doing about it?"

"About the stirring in the Force? Nothing, at the moment, save for ensuring balance."

What does that look like, though, this "ensuring balance"? Does it mean slaughtering every Force user who has an affinity for only one side of the Force? You forget that the imbalance began when I destroyed the Jedi Order.

"The imbalance," Ren said, daring to raise his head once more, "started when the Jedi all but eliminated the Sith on Takodana."

The Vader half of his grandfather made a low, grating noise, not unlike the growl of a predator. "Do not speak of such things as if you understand them. The Force is not as simple as your "master" would have you believe."

Anakin's frown deepened. "You still plan on killing my son, don't you?"

Opening his mouth to reply, Ren instead turned his head aside, refusing to look his grandfather in the face. Although he had deliberately sought out his grandfather's ghost, he now wished desperately that he could hide from this man, get as far away as possible. Anakin, Vader, whatever he was…he had a knack for seeing right into the heart of a person, extracting their thoughts and intentions like a medicine man drawing poison from a wound. That was how his grandfather had learnt of his mother's existence, after all; he had simply plucked the thought from Luke Skywalker's mind as if it was a splinter.

Anakin let out a long sigh. "Kylo Ren, or whatever you happen to call yourself now…how many times do I have to tell you: Killing is not the way to balance the Force. If anything, bloodshed only increases the imbalance of the Force, makes it stronger and stronger." His grandfather nodded toward him. "You remember what happened on Mortis, correct?"

Still refusing to look at his grandfather, Ren nodded. "Of course I do. You brought balance to that world by killing the Family."

"But why was the Force out of balance in the first place?"

Gaze lowered toward the floor, Ren began searching through his memory for the answer. According to what his grandfather had told him, Anakin Skywalker—along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and a being Ren only knew as Ashla—had been drawn to a world controlled by a near-omnipotent family of Force-wielders, each of which embodied a particular aspect of the Force. The Sister, with her affinity for selflessness, was the personification of the light side; her inherently selfish Brother, on the other hand, was the dark side given form. Standing between the two was The Father, who—just like Anakin—was to mediate a balance between the dark and the light. More precisely, he was to control his children…until, of course, he couldn't. His Son, enticed by the raw power of Anakin's presence, had decided to kill The Sister, causing the dark side to gain strength in the galaxy. Fearing the disharmony brought about by that event, The Father persuaded Anakin to help him kill The Son as well, which his grandfather had done with little hesitation. The Son was evil, after all—quite literally. And besides, the Force was out of balance; it was the Chosen One's duty to restore order to the chaos, to bring meaning out of senselessness.

"It was because of The Son's actions," Ren finally decided. "Destroying one personification of the Force made the other too strong."

"The light side wasn't completely destroyed then," Anakin corrected him. "Her spirit transferred into the body of my student, the one I call Ashla. I would later destroy Ashla at the Battle of Malachor, but I did not destroy her spirit; I don't think anyone can. It passed on to another form, just as your body will one day become dust." He shook his head. "But that's enough of that for now. What's important is that you realize that murder, even the most well-meaning one, can only result in imbalance. Death, by its nature, is part of the dark side, so every death you cause gives the darkness strength. Especially deaths of light side-wielders; their demise leaves a vacuum in the Force so dark, so…cold that it takes decades for the Force to compensate for the loss."

"But you killed the Emperor," Ren pointed out.

"I did, but only because his darkness was greater than the vacuum he left behind. Leaving him alive, in the end, would've been much worse for the balance than his death was".

"Then his death did bring balance."

"It would have," Anakin admitted, "if I hadn't died as well. Just as I once drew power from both sides of the Force, they drew power from me. They were, in a way, bound to my life. If I lived, they flourished; if I died, they would be diminished." Anakin/Vader slid closer to him, making it difficult for him to continue looking away. "Balance will be restored when the Force raises up someone like me, just as it created me to fill the Father's role when he perished on Mortis."

Ren turned his head so that he was looking straight forward, but still wasn't looking at his grandfather. "I cannot fill that role if I cannot even find harmony in the battle within myself."

Both Anakin and Vader said, "Explain."

"Snoke says that I cannot bring balance to the Force unless I can be both good and evil, light and dark." He risked a look upward, to where Anakin's scared face was peering out of the mask. "Right now, I fear I may be too good, just like you once were."

"What was caused you to feel this way?"

"Because I…" Ren paused for a long, drawn-out moment, letting himself simply breathe. He had known he was backsliding for some time now, had felt himself falling seamlessly back into his old ways and patterns, but he had never acknowledged that this was taking place. Instead, he had ignored it, acted as if it wasn't happening—although he was certain his grandfather had noticed. Worse, he knew that Snoke had been aware of his backsliding as well, and knew it was only a matter of time until his master asked him to do something desperate to bring him back into the fold. "Forgive me. I feel it again."

"Feel what?" Anakin/Vader asked in unison, their shared voice an oddly melodic blend of the organic and the artificial, man and machine.

Ren lifted his head abruptly. "The call to the light."

"You will never be rid of that feeling, boy," Vader hissed.

Anakin's gaze softened. "I think you misunderstand what is truly light, Kylo. For now, while we're bound to this crude matter, maintaining balance is what is light. What is good. Sometimes, evil has to occur in order for the will of the Force to be accomplished, but that doesn't mean that the ultimate end of the universe is to be restricted to a system in which good necessitates evil. When you reach the other side, you'll see that one day, the darkness will not be necessary for balance—or even to make the light seem a little lighter." A rueful smile touched the visible half of his grandfather's lips. "I learned too late that the Jedi were wrong: Death can't exist without life, but life can indeed exist without death."

"Why does this worry you, child?" Vader asked in his deep, menacing bass.

"Supreme Leader senses it," Ren replied, which he knew was answer enough. His grandfather had witnessed firsthand the horror he experienced whenever Snoke felt that his protégé was somehow lacking.

"What do you wish me to do about it?" Anakin and Vader said, in unison once more.

"Show me again the power of the darkness," Ren answered, "and I will let nothing stand in our way." He paused, unsteady, then added: "Show me, grandfather, and I will finish what you started."

"And what is it that I have started, Kylo Ren"? Vader inquired, hooking his thumb into his belt.

Anakin's soft blue eye bored into his mask's visor. "Or, let me ask a better question: What has Snoke told you I started, as opposed to what I've told you?"

Kylo Ren didn't answer his grandfather. He didn't want to. These days, it hurt too much to admit things aloud, to voice his inner truths, because speaking them somehow set them in stone. Made them certain to happen as opposed to probable.

Kylo Ren wasn't simply going to destroy the Jedi—or even the Sith, for that matter.

Following in his grandfather's footsteps, Kylo Ren was going to make sure no unworthy being ever touched the Force again.

And he wasn't going to let anyone, not even his own family, stand in his way.