Once more, Kylo pulls up the candid picture of Rey that went viral on the holonet weeks ago. Is this our Empress? There are silly opinion polls and comment pages devoted to the topic. Kylo hadn't known that there was so much public interest in his wife. Rey has been in public only a handful of times and it seems that the entire galaxy is clamoring for more of their mysterious First Lady.
But the entire holonet has missed the forest for the trees where this picture is concerned. For the real intrigue in the photograph is not Lady Rey sporting a ponytail and rumpled jumpsuit in a museum. It's the man at her side only partially shown in the picture and mistaken for a bodyguard. The Muun Sith Supreme Leader himself has gone completely unnoticed by all his loyal subjects.
Kylo has no doubt that his Master has seen this picture. And no doubt that he had laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all.
Seeing his Master on Coruscant with Rey only makes Kylo angry. Not a day after quizzing Kylo about retrieving his wife, Snoke himself had gone to do so. The reclusive Supreme Leader who Kylo has rarely known ever to leave his hidden stronghold fortress had ventured into public in the very heart of the galaxy. He did not send a squad of troopers. No, Snoke had valued Rey so much that he had gone himself. And that makes Kylo feel like a complete ass. He's kicking himself for not having run after Rey that very night. Hell, he might have tackled her before she ever made it out the door at Bast. But at the very least, he should have chased her. Nestor Ren says women always want to be chased.
Kylo grunts and turns off his datapad. He's hoping never to see that picture again.
And he refuses to miss her. Not the singsong way she greets the boys in the morning. Not the way she always has to check on the twins one last time before she and Kylo go to bed.
Not the way she persists in eating rations for breakfast like she's still on Jakku. Not the way she knows almost every stormtrooper at his castle by name.
And definitely not the way she rolls her eyes, tosses her head and cocks her chin when she's annoyed at something. Usually, him.
No, he does not miss her. Not anything about her.
Not the way she snuggles up against him in bed during the night without knowing it. Not the way she can get him out of his uniform in record time with just a come hither look. Not the way every now and then she coyly asks him to leave his mask on in bed and calls him her Sith.
He definitely does not miss her. And he doesn't want her back. Really, he wouldn't take her back. Not now that she's living at his Master's stronghold ostensibly Force healing his dead wife all day. Kylo doesn't even want to think about what she's doing at night.
No, he wouldn't take her back. Well, maybe if she begged. But she's not going to do that. And neither is he.
Kylo knows that Rey sneaks back to Bast to see the twins on the days when he is gone from his castle. She probably coordinates it with Milo in advance. Kylo is fine with this. It doesn't matter if she comes, so long as he doesn't have to see her.
But one morning he lingers hours too late at home to deal with a crisis. Then he decides to check in on his kids before he leaves for a week in the Outer Rim. He's awkwardly patting Bane on the head when Kylo senses Rey in the Force. And the twins do too. Because of course they would know their mother. She has that unmistakable Force imprint that once had led Luke Skywalker straight to her.
Even after years together, Rey's Force imprint is like a siren's call to Kylo's mind. And it arrests him. He stands there a moment overcome by her unconscious lure. It calls to him, and he longs for it. And just for a moment, he revels in it.
Now his boys are clapping their chubby hands and shrieking with joy. Daddy is forgotten and they are half running, half crawling down the hallway to the main entrance as fast as their little legs can take them. Kylo follows but then hangs back to watch. He sees Rey burst in to catch each boy in her arms for a big smacking kiss and a lot of fuss. Milo follows her in at his more sedate pace and looks on like a proud grandpa. Yes, Snoke's old manservant is most definitely an accomplice.
All this whooping happiness is painful to watch. Because this is not how it's supposed to be. He and Rey were going to be the couple who had it all and got it right. They would be the Skywalkers who stayed together and raised their children as a family. He and his Master would teach his sons the Dark and she would teach them the Light. Passing on the very best of both traditions and all of the combined power. And always they would fight on the same side, wanting the same things.
For never again would the Skywalker family be ripped apart by ideology, ambition or circumstance. That all had ended once he and Rey had joined hands and pledged as Sith together forever in the Force. And the little girl abandoned by her family and the confused boy born to a legacy of dysfunction were going to get the wholesome normal private life they each craved. Or, as close as you can get to that when you're the Skywalker Siths who rule the galaxy.
But that's all falling apart now. He and Rey are living separate lives and she's with his Master now. No doubt doing all sorts of sordid things in Snoke's bed when she's not healing that bride of Frankenstein wife of his. Kylo scowls at the thought. Not for a minute had he believed his wife's message. Either she is lying to protect him or she is lying to protect Snoke. But it has to be a lie. There's no way randy old Darth Plagueis is keeping his hands off Rey.
He watches from afar as Rey settles a boy on each hip and strides forward towards him unaware that she is being watched. But then she looks up, sees him and freezes. Kylo feels her surprise and, yes, her guilt radiate at him through the Force. Yes, it's as he had feared. Rey had lied to him. She's feeling guilty because she lied to him and she's still sleeping with Snoke.
They stand there, eyes locked in silence. Then Kylo turns on heel and walks away. He has nothing to say to her.
Days later he's still on that weeklong trip to the Outer Rim, deep in hyperspace in the Western Reaches, when the thought occurs to him. Yes, this is long overdue, Kylo thinks. His Master had told him to do this years ago but he had never made the time. Well, today is the day. Kylo gives the order to shift course and to land the shuttle at the Niima Outpost on Jakku.
Everyone is wondering the reason for the unscheduled stop. No one goes to this backwards Hellhole without a good reason. "Are we meeting someone?" a dubious assistant asks.
"No, we are killing someone." Kylo thinks a moment and then corrects himself. "I am killing someone. Make sure there are cameras. We're sending this to PR."
While Kylo is stuck finishing a com on the shuttle, his men locate this Unkar Plutt person his Master had told him about years ago when first Snoke had met Rey. Soon enough, the trembling Crolute junk boss awaits the Emperor's attention surrounded by a squad of troopers. A small crowd of bedraggled onlookers gathers. All in all, Kylo thinks cynically as he descends the shuttle ramp, the stage is well set for what he's about to do. The First Order is known for its political theatre, after all. He will do Hux proud today.
In a swirl of wind-whipped black robes, the masked ruler of the galaxy strides up to the prisoner. He eschews any preamble. Kylo Ren is a man of action, not words. For his opening salvo, the Sith prince ignites his famous laser sword. It is gratifying to see Plutt flinch and cower at the sound.
Kylo stands in silence, taking in the man who had the power of life and death over his wife for so many years. Behind the mask, his eyes linger on the meaty fists and forearms of the brute. Their size is in stark contrast to the scrawny, twig like frame of the starved scavenger girl the First Order had captured years ago. Those fists and no doubt other things had landed hard on Rey's back for years. And while the deep indentations and lacerations that once scarred her skin are long gone, Kylo is certain that the memories of her beatings at the hands of this man are not.
So today this Sith will give his lady vengeance. And the Emperor will make a statement to galaxy at large. His violence will have multiple purposes and will be rationally defensible. Snoke should be pleased.
"Do you remember a girl sold to you by spicers as a small child?" Kylo demands. "A girl you starved, cheated and beat repeatedly for years?"
"Rey?" The Crolute exhales his beloved's name in surprise and confusion. "This is about Rey?" Whatever misdeeds this lout fears the First Order for, clearly they had not included Rey. Well, good. Kylo Ren will deliver justice today on multiple fronts.
"Yes, Rey," Kylo answers curtly. He begins to circle the junk boss now with slow, methodical steps. His lit sword is blazing in his hand, ready to strike. "Tell me about the girl Rey."
"She was a scavenger. And a thief," the man sputters out. His eyes are tracking the tip of Kylo's sword anxiously. "She stole my ship!"
"What ship?"
"The Millennium Falcon."
"Who owns the Millennium Falcon?" Kylo asks, as if perhaps he has misheard.
"I do."
This brash claim to ownership makes Kylo smile grimly behind his mask. "Wrong. The smuggler Han Solo owned the Millennium Falcon. It was stolen from him years ago. And you stole it from those who stole it first. You were the second in a line of thieves, Unkar Plutt."
But the junk boss won't concede. "She stole my ship!" he maintains and then slyly adds, "She was running from the First Order at the time."
"Wrong. If anyone owns the Millennium Falcon, I do," Kylo decrees cryptically. Let the holonet chew on that one, he thinks to himself. "And the girl was running to the First Order for help. To get away from you," he lies.
Kylo stops in front of Plutt now and nods to the troopers who flank him. They know what to do. As they press the Crolute down on his knees and step back, Plutt's eyes go wide. Yes, Jakku's chief brute knows what's coming. And it's been a long time coming, as far as Kylo is concerned.
"You and your kind are the scourge of the Rim," Emperor Ren announces coldly. "The crime bosses, the swindlers, the smugglers, the slumlords, the petty criminals who prey on honest people and hinder opportunity. Who line their pockets with stolen funds meant for development, who skim protection money off hardworking citizens, who impede progress and legitimate business activity with their entrenched graft."
Raising his sword to the prisoner's throat, the Emperor pronounces his sentence. And, yes, the litany of charges might not strictly apply to this particular wretch, but it's all the same as far as Kylo is concerned. He's making an example, not litigating a case.
"Unkar Plutt, this is justice for every orphan child who grew up hungry and uneducated in squalor in the Rim. For every desperate family fleeced by thugs and kept down by poverty. For all the honest people who worked hard but could not get ahead because only crime pays. What began with the Old Republic ends now with my Empire. Your day is done. No longer will good people tolerate lawlessness and corruption as a way of life."
The junk boss is blubbering now and begging on his hands and knees in the sand. "Mercy! Mercy, I beg you!"
But Emperor Ren is unmoved. He came here to kill, and kill he shall. "By rights, you should die slowly. You should suffer for the years of pain you and your kind have caused. But today I will give you a quick, clean death. Others will not be so lucky. Now get up," Kylo sneers at him. "Take this like a man."
The Crolute ceases and sits up on his knees. "What happened to the girl?" he asks, suddenly and belatedly curious as to why the Emperor of the galaxy is interested in an orphan scavenger on Jakku.
"I married her," Kylo reveals. He enjoys watching the stunned look on Plutt's face and the shocked reaction from the crowd. He lets this news sink in for a few seconds before he takes off the prisoner's head with one stylish twirling swing.
"So end all enemies of the Empire," he announces to cheers.
The footage is edited and released to go viral on the holonet. For nothing stokes the public's lurid interest like a stylized, well produced execution holovid. The First Order has long championed law and order in the Rim Worlds, so the content itself shouldn't be surprising. But this time the galaxy finds it utterly compelling. For the context of the Emperor's brief, impassioned speech fascinates. It is both a shock and a welcome surprise to learn that the great Kylo Ren married a downtrodden Rim dweller, to learn that the Empress herself is an authentic victim of the empty promises of the New Republic. Yes, the man walks the walk and talks the talk, the chattering classes agree. The media talking heads now praise the young Emperor as a man of sincere values and integrity. He's not the power hungry despot those Resistance terrorists complain him to be. He's a true reformer at heart, poised to deliver on the promises of the First Order.
Snoke laughs and asks if he will promise a chicken in every pot for his next speech. Then he tells Kylo that was a political stunt worthy of his mother. And he means it as praise.
Rey watches the clip with a mix of pride, horror and disgust. Her secret is out and perhaps that's a relief. Trust it to the First Order to find a way to get political mileage out of Rey's hardscrabble Jakku background. Now Kylo Ren is empowered by his connection to the powerless, celebrated for his mésalliance with Les Miserables, and bolstered by the basket of deplorables who self-identify with Unkar Plutt's victims. All in all, it's a big win for everyone but Plutt.
And it is a strange turn of events for Alderaan's aristocratic Sith prince to become the Robin Hood folk hero of the Rim. For who knew that the man who brought us the Starkiller would lead the populist rallying cry for reform? His anti-crime manifesto such an ironic posture for the secret son of one of the galaxy's most famous smugglers. Yes, it's a bizarre mix of sincerity and opportunism but Kylo Ren thinks his grandfather the slave boy from Outer Rim Tatooine would approve.
And it is with Darth Vader weighing heavily on his mind that the Emperor orders his shuttle to make an unscheduled stop at the ships graveyard. Kylo Ren is not yet ready to leave the wasteland Jakku.
Alone he walks unmasked in the desert twilight. Seeing firsthand the wreckage of his grandfather's glorious Imperial Navy decayed and bleached for decades now in the uncaring sun. Rey has described it all to him, but no mere words can capture the true feel of this place. Especially to a Skywalker.
This was the last stand of a valiant lost cause, a Marathon, a Thermopylae, an Actium. Here downed ships and mummified corpses bear witness to the decisive defeat of a Waterloo, a Yorktown, a Hastings. Above these shifting sands commenced the beginning of the end like at Amiens, at Stalingrad, at Hiroshima. Yes, Kylo thinks as he takes it all in, here the course of history changed.
There is much wisdom to be gleaned from this graveyard world. But foremost in his mind is that an empire will fall without unified leadership. It was little more than a year after Vader turned on Sidious when it all had crumbled at the Battle of Jakku. The Apprentice had turned on his Master and won. But still lost in the end. And so Kylo Ren wonders which is his bigger risk: attempting to kill his Master or succeeding in killing his Master. This has been his food for thought for many days now.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. For here on Jakku strewn at the feet of the Second Emperor is the failure of the First Empire. And that is the true meaning of this place, Kylo Ren decides: failure.
Skywalkers have never lacked for vision. It is in the implementation that his grandfather and his mother faltered. And his uncle? Well, his uncle had given up early and ran to exile. Luke Skywalker had not so much failed as he had quit. Such a contrast the Last Jedi had been to his twin sister. For the tenacious Leia Organa had never known when to quit.
More and more, it worries Kylo that his family's legacy is not victory but failure. And that Kylo will indeed finish what his grandfather started when he tossed Darth Sidious down the reactor shaft. That if he kills his Master, Kylo too will throw it all away. And that will culminate in the collapse of yet another Skywalker Sith Empire and more years of war. And then the Skywalker name will be infamous and not glorious. A family of damned fools who started idealistic crusades they never finished. A line of disappointing prodigies who tried too hard and did too little. For Jedi or Sith, they each had failed.
Snoke is right that he has much to learn about governing. And privately, Kylo will admit that he needs his Master desperately. Ironically, it is not the mysteries of Dark power he craves, but more pragmatic and mundane skills. For it might take a ruthless Sith lord to win a galactic empire, but it doesn't take one to govern. It takes a shrewd statesman. And Kylo Ren is many things, but he is not that. And, more and more he suspects that Snoke is.
And Kylo is not his Master. He does not have extra lifetimes for second chances. His time is now. It's step up or step aside, he knows.
But Gods! How this situation galls him. It goes against his every instinct to let the conflict lie fallow. To suck up his pride, to swallow his outrage, and to dampen his rage. These are not easy tasks for a cuckold Sith. But they are necessary if Kylo is to continue in his role as Apprentice.
Will Rey ever understand his decision not to avenge her treatment? Will she see this as Kylo choosing power over her? In a way, he is. But even the selfish Kylo Ren can see that the best hope for all in the galaxy now is for him to succeed.
And that success will be necessary for historians to justify the deaths of trillions in the years since the Old Republic fell. He's a Sith so the ends always justify the means. But here's the catch-you have to achieve the ends. And the ends keep changing, the stakes are higher and the task harder. The war is won, his Empire is built but now it needs to thrive and to endure. So it will matter. So he will matter.
Please let it not all be in vain.
Now and forever may the Sith rule the galaxy. And may they be the Skywalker Siths. The enlightened masters of the Shadow Force, the harbingers of balance descended from the Chosen One as long foretold, nurtured into Darkness at the knee of their revered eternal patriarch. The wily betrayer, the Sith for all ages and a man for all seasons, Darth Plagueis the Wise.
As he makes his way back to the waiting shuttle, Kylo's mind is made up. He will again be the loyal Apprentice he once was. No more will he plot to kill the Muun. For his own sake, for his sons' sake, and for the sake of the galaxy. So the Emperor dusts himself off, shaking away the ghosts of the past along with the clingy Jakku sand. Hoping against hope that the one woman he has ever cared for will understand.
Kylo Ren knows he is a Sith through and through, and he has a secret dead son to prove it. So he does not forgive and he does not forget. But, in this case, he will accept what he cannot change and move on. And as soon as his Master's corpse wife is healed and alive, he will collect his own wife and take her home where she belongs.