"Eas'd the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear."
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 37
Kylo tries to meditate.
He sits on the edge of volcanic rock overlooking the lava seas. In this place his grandfather—Darth Vader—had been born. Not born but reformed. Altered. Tragedy transformed him. The Dark offered solace. Kylo ruminates. He thinks back. He considers all he has learned.
It is hard to meditate. He is distracted. He breathes, inhaling hot, pungent air, the feel of it burning his throat and centering him. He closes his eyes.
Peace is a lie. There is only passion.
Through passion I gain strength.
Through strength I gain power.
Through power I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken.
The Force shall set me free.
There was a time when these words could ground him. He had rejected the Jedi code. He did not belong. His power was not accepted by those who saw the Light as the only way. There was too much Darkness within him. He loved. He felt so deeply. His heart seemed too big for his body and it hurt that those around him feared what he carried inside it.
Peace is a lie. He learned that the hard way. Passion came easy. He grew stronger. Snoke whispered the words but he knew them already. This is who you are. This is who I am. Heir apparent to Lord Vader.
He finally knew who his grandfather was. It seemed like his grandfather might be the only one to understand.
It took Kylo sixth months to find the charred helmet. No longer on Endor. The grave had been robbed by thieves who traded in Dark side artefacts. Kylo knew them from other pieces he had found. There was no trade involved when he found them this time. He was Vader's grandson. He would make Grandfather proud.
The mask rarely spoke to him. The voice seemed so quiet and Kylo spent most of their conversations ignoring the suspicion that he made the voice up. But he felt what traces of the Force still lingered in the object. He felt a recognition. He drew on the Dark because the Light had rejected him. There was so little left, so little to begin with, and it hurt to be "good", to play the obedient Jedi like Luke insisted, as if being Ben Solo was a terrible affront.
Kylo knows passion. He knows it so well. Hurt and anger and pain and rejection. These are the facets of love. Want and hunger and jealousy and lust. He is learning more sides to his emotions. Not all of them pure. None of them in the tethered, tame way that the Jedi demand. He does not feel Lightly. He only knows that he feels.
The breathing slows. His fingers on the ground delve into ashy particles. Tendrils of the Force reach out. They penetrate through the rock, beyond the crust, into the raging, fiery core of this orb. He feels the Dark. It reaches back for him. It is kind as a lover. Desperate and needy too. It hungers in the way he does. He hears the spirits, those he chooses, all the dead that sing and know this song, all the ones that lie not in peace but in passion. He is renewed. He is strong.
He is the grandson of Darth Vader. Jedi killers joined by blood.
The connection goes. Kylo opens his eyes. He is breathing heavily. The sulfur clogs his lungs. The heat of the lava is enough to redden his face. His eyes water and he cannot stay here now. He has stayed for too long. He wanders back. Occasional lava fleas flutter along the molten surface of the red rivers, huge insects once tamed by the natives that lived here, they are feral now. Lost creatures feeding on the planet's ores. On the northern hemisphere a few native enclaves remain. But Kylo never goes there and they never dare venture here, not with the visage of the castle. When Kylo found this place, it seemed as if it waited just for him.
He enters via an underground passageway. It leads into caves originally created to mine the ores where the lakes of lava still run high. The Dark is richest here. Kylo is drunk but this kind of intoxication always calms him. It is not the Dark that distresses him. Not the knowledge of the dead, how he can see and hear them at will and do their bidding. No. He steps onto an elevator that runs the full height of the castle. He stops at the penultimate floor. The doors open, but he stays where he is. He cannot face this yet. The one place he should go, the place that he always seeks. He is drawn to another. At the top he gets off. The bedroom is cast in orange light that pulses through the constant black clouds. He can see her beneath the sheets. He goes to her and lays down, pulls her body against his.
"Ben?"
She is soft and warm and naked. He strips off his gloves and reminds himself of the smoothness of her skin, the places she is hairless now. She sighs and turns into him.
"Good morning to you."
"It is almost lunchtime," he says.
She sits up. "How long have I slept?"
"Long enough." He pulls her back down and he kisses her. She accepts his love. Does she accept everything? He does not want to ask as she removes his clothes, as he lies back and she rides him. What kind of Jedi is this? Tits bouncing in his palms and her murmuring his name like a prayer with all the passion. She is a feeling creature just like him. He feels the Light inside her but she is not meant for peace. She is meant for him. Does she see it now? The fading line on her arm where their blood became one. Please do not tempt me back. Do not ask. Just accept who I am. Accept this.
"Yes! Yes!" Her hands flat to his chest, she is so close now. "I love you. So good—so good."
I am not good, he thinks as she comes tight around him.
They shower together. She does not mention the bacta tank again. He sees her glance at it as they return to the bedroom to dress. He puts on training clothes, loose black pants and top. She rummages around and can only come up with lingerie. He smiles as she frowns. "Give me that." He pulls off his shirt and she wears it; it hangs like a shroud.
"Should I stay shirtless?" he says.
"Yes." Her eyes behold him without any shyness now.
His shirt reaches halfway down her thighs. She wears nothing else. He starts to harden again. She is in his clothes. Does she smell like him too? Can he mark her in some other way? She is too busy to care, going to a vase of flowers. The bouquet that she carried when they wed but the flowers seem denser. So many kriffing needle blossoms with their purple blooms and blood-red roses mixed in. She pulls several out and places them in her hair, weaving its length into a knot.
"What are you doing?"
"I've not seen one other plant here," she says.
"You've not seen anything."
"Show me then." She wraps her arms around the bare length of one of his. "Feed me first. But then you must show me everything."
They kiss in the elevator. She makes it stop and gets down on her knees and takes him into her mouth. The walls bend as he comes; the entire car shakes. She smiles, wiping her wet lips as she looks up at him and he wonders if this is all the influence of Mustafar or if this is who she really is.
"Still hungry?" he manages.
She nods as she climbs back to her feet.
He takes her to a large living space with a hearth carved out of the obsidian walls. Instead of flames, lava pours, flowing down to the disused mines underneath. Rey—his wife, he reminds himself, still partly disbelieving—sits on the floor before it. She is happy if she is warm, he knows. She takes a plate of food and eats cross-legged while he sits and watches from a sofa, black like all the rest. He is ravenous like her. They eat in silence, but he watches. She is drawn to the fireplace, to the hypnotic lava flow.
"Where does it go?" she says.
"All the way down."
"Can you show me?"
He once made a promise kneeling at her feet: he would show her anything. He will not break that promise now.
"Later."
"Why?"
"You are hardly dressed for it."
"Neither are you."
"Do you want to explore so badly?" he says.
"Give me your pants."
He does. He feels her eyes on his back as he returns naked to the bedroom.
She is not there once he is dressed, back in his usual uniform. He corners a droid, which beeps in surprise since he so rarely addresses them, and demands to know where she has gone.
"Down in the elevator, my Lord."
Down. Down there without him. Does she even have shoes?
It feels like a long time until he reaches the cave level. The doors open, and he steps out onto uneven rock, hot beneath the thick soles of his boots. The lava spits and gurgles like a living thing. In some ways it is. This is the planet's blood. This is the Dark side's soul. Kylo calls for Rey. He reaches out with the Force.
"Make it stop!"
Did he hear the words echo off the walls or in his head? He runs, sinking on the fluid ash. Skidding down a sudden slope. There is a black figure curled up at the bottom. Invisible against the black sands except for the purple and red flowers in her hair. She is swallowed by his clothes and the walls of the cave. The lava laps nearby and Kylo treads carefully to avoid it.
"Rey? What is it?"
"Don't you hear it?" She blinks and looks up at him. "It's quiet now." Tears stream down her face, which is pink from the heat and whatever reason she is crying. "It's quiet. Oh Gods."
She clutches her head and cries more.
"What don't I hear?" He crouches down beside her. "Tell me."
"They were tortured."
"Who?"
"The Jedi. Someone brought them here and did such awful things. There is no peace. They are trapped. They all cry in the lava. They yelled at me and they wouldn't stop. They were so loud until—"
He holds her to him. "Until I came."
"Yes."
Kylo sits in the hot sands and pulls her into his lap. Her nose nudges his neck and he can feel the air tickle his skin as she sniffles.
"Can you hear them now?" she says.
"No."
"Why don't you try?" She knows he can. Before the bond broke and even after she learned what he did, what he can do. There is more that he has not tried yet. Before when he meditated he let the voices of the Dark side talk but he did not think of any others. There are so many. So many things he does not know.
He holds her tight. "I will not let them harm you."
"I know."
So he closes his eyes and he concentrates. He lets them come. Like emerging from underwater, ears popping and sound becoming clear. The voices yell. They scream. He can see them through his eyelids, red shadows, some in green and yellow and blue and white and even lilac. Drowning in the lava. Begging for release.
He looks at them. Who did this? he thinks.
Vader! Vader! Please save us from Darth Vader!
No.
Rey clings; her nails bite through his tunic to his skin. "It's so loud."
"I know." One large hand cradles her head. "You must be quiet." The voices die down. "Come. Let me help you."
The lava bubbles violently. Dozens of spirits rise up. Rey's eyes are scrunched shut but Kylo does not think she can see them quite like he does. They come to him. They reach out and touch his face and as each one does, he is witness to their story. Brave Jedi. The last remaining few. The final threat to the Empire. To be tortured not just for information but for fun. To wipe the Light side out. To tempt them towards Darkness.
"I am sorry," Kylo says. "I am sorry. I am sorry."
There are so many. He is exhausted when he is done. The lava stills; he has never seen it so calm. He blinks. Rey looks at him. She is holding his face. She is stroking it, wiping away tears he is not aware he has made.
"It's okay. It's quiet now. You helped them, Ben. You helped them."
He hugs her and she lets him squeeze too harshly. He needs the comfort. He needs to feel her, a tangible presence in his arms.
"I did not know," he whispers.
"But you do now."
He does not say yes. Yes, I know. But do you know what else he did?
This time it is Rey who helps Kylo back to the elevator. He feels he is leaning onto her as the car rides up. They return to the lounge and she sits him on the sofa. She lies next to him and draws him down so his full length is stretched out and his head is cushioned on her chest.
"You must talk to me," she says.
"What about?"
"How you absorb the dead."
"I don't absorb—"
"But it weighs heavy on you."
"Yes."
She runs her fingers through his hair; she kisses his brow. This is a Light side trick. To offer comfort. To show him care. He is amenable. He is susceptible to this. Like a child in his mother's arms, he is safe here. "It is my burden too," she tells him.
"No—"
"We are married. We are bonded by blood. I will help you. I will always help you, Ben."
He wants to tell her thank you and I love you and I will always help you. But he is tired. He closes his eyes and lets her hold him. He closes his eyes and falls asleep to the brilliant beat of his Jedi wife's heart.
She waits until he is unmoving, until his breathing is regular and his body heavy. She feels almost his full weight upon her.
He is rarely as exhausted as this. She wriggles her way out and brushes his hair back and kisses his cheek. She remembers him sleeping in the throne room and sleeping in the library and he is so beautiful. She always falls asleep before him and he always wakes before her; she does not get the chance to see him like this. She thinks he looks peaceful. She can sense what the dead spirits have taken out of him. They do not need the bond for she can read him now, she can read the Force. His blood has become hers and he is a part of her.
She returns to their bedroom. She will change out of his clothes. Hot and dusty with sweat and ash. Sticky with tears. She had not been prepared for the voices. So much worse than anything before. So much pain and suffering. She thought she would go mad. She thought she did until Ben appeared. She does not know how he can endure it. There is a core of steel inside him; sometimes molten metal but it can cool and harden. The same core runs through her too.
She is used to the Dark now. She has slept for so long. She has succumbed to her desires. She has been his plaything. He has been her plaything too.
She enters the refresher and removes Ben's clothes. Naked, her hand brushes the bacta tank. She can see her reflection. She can feel nothing in the Force. She quickly washes and goes through all her clothes, settling on a full-length gown of blue silk, deep like the twilight sky. Her back and shoulders are exposed but the front is demure. It is modest compared to the rest she has worn but it makes her feel delicate and feminine, something she thinks she is not. She adds more flowers to her hair. She puts on the necklace Ben gave her. She looks at her reflection again in the glass of the bacta tank. A different woman looks back. She hears a different voice beside her.
You look beautiful.
A man's, but not her husband's. She turns, but no one is there. Please no more voices, she thinks. She does not want to wake him. He deserves to sleep. She will sit and watch him as he watches her. Be there when he wakes for once. Let him know he is not alone.
She enters the elevator and the voice talks again. Whispers a name. It is strange. The elevator jerks. The doors open only one floor below. She has not been here, to this darkened room, but something calls to her. Is it the Dark? Is this like Plagueis? She wants to heed all the warnings, learn the lessons of before, but the Force is not a teacher. It is out of her control.
The room is dark except for a single light overhead. On the walls she can see shelves and the shadows of objects, but the light draws her to a single place. A raised platform housing a twisted mask. Even charred and disfigured, it is unmistakable.
Vader.
Rey steps forward. Her hand reaches out to touch it and the room turns cold.
Just beyond the helmet she can see something. A shimmer of pale blue. It flickers for a moment, materializing into the holo of a man.
He is beautiful, she thinks. Tall and blond, and as beautiful as Alec, though this man's eyes are warmer. There is a scar on his face that begins above his right eye; it reminds her of the one she gave to Ben. He is as tall as Ben; younger though, but with the same assured gaze. He wears black Jedi robes. One of his hands is metal and the other appears flesh and blood. It is the latter that reaches out for her.
"Padme?" the man says. "Padme, is it you?"
Rey cannot move. The hand makes contact her cheek, tracing her skin with a whisper-soft touch.
"Who... who is Padme?" she says.
The image frowns. It begins to transform, becoming something ugly and deformed. The eyes glow yellow; the skin is white and scarred. Rey steps back in fear but there is no need—the image is gone.
Has she made it angry? Heart pounding, she waits but it does not return. She searches with the Force but there is nothing. It is only her and the mask, molded from the same face.
Be brave, she thinks. You need to know. Be brave. You can do this. And she does.
Her fingers make contact and then the visions come.
A boy in the desert. A slave for a mother. He is taken and raised by strange men. He is the Light. He is the chosen one. So much power. It comes easy. But other things are hard. How he misses her. His mother dies. He takes revenge but it is not enough.
The boy becomes a man, a beautiful man. He loves a girl. The girl is a woman now. This is love. What is wrong? Why can't the Jedi love? But see how the Jedi are wrong? How they lie? Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
He knows what he must do. Kill them all. Even the younglings. He cuts every one of them down. Standing on a shore of molten lava. The woman comes to him, swollen with child. She wants him to change. He cannot lose her. This is for you, he thinks, as she falls, unmoving. This is for you as he fights his brother. As he lies mutilated. As he suffers. As he rises beneath the protection of a mask. I did this for you. But the woman is gone.
Padme.
Rey falls to her knees. She cannot breathe. She touches the necklace and it burns.
Kylo does not wake gradually from sleep; he never does. A sudden gasping. The fear of threat, of what or who he might find. Sleep will never come easy and waking will always be hard. He looks around. Rey is gone. He is sitting on the sofa. Was she here at all or a far-off dream? Has she left him again like before? Taken his father's ship. Rejected what he offered.
The elevator doors open, and Rey runs out. She wears a dark gown that flows as she moves. Too many flowers in her hair but the necklace is on. She is a goddess. She is the image of life.
He stands. "Rey?" She throws herself into his arms.
He holds her, aims to soothe her as she did for him. Her hands clutch at the front of his tunic and her face pressed to his chest. She murmurs words and he struggles to hear them. He asks her to repeat them.
"Who is Padme?" she says.
Kylo's whole body goes rigid and hard.
"Did Vader kill her? Ben, I saw him."
"Who?"
"Anakin! Your grandfather! Are they not all the same?" Her hands cover her face as she says, "I saw what he did. Such terrible things."
Kylo pulls her hands away so he can see her. "You must tell me, Rey. What happened?"
She recounts all she saw, what she felt, trembling as he holds her against him; by the end he is shaking too.
"I had only heard stories. The kind used to frighten children so that they might behave. They did not seem real. But they are. How can you bear it, Ben?"
He cannot. "My grandfather was a monster," he says. "He tortured those Jedi. He killed younglings." These are the truths that he cannot face, that cannot be buried. He thinks of Nan and Petra on their rainforest planet, innocent and loud and hopeful, and if he could cut them down to save the life of Rey. Does he have lines that he will not cross now? Is that what she has made of him?
"He did it for love," Rey says. "The Jedi made him deny it and the Sith only twisted it but he loved her."
"Yes."
"Would you do the same?"
He thinks of all the dead he has touched. The souls of the younglings he released. What would he do for her? You have changed me, he thinks. I have told you this. I do not know myself. Not as I did before. I am something else. I barely feel like Kylo Ren. Is it still enough for you?
"I would do whatever you ask of me," he says.
She holds his face between her hands. "I know." She wraps her arms around him. "I know."
They stand holding each other in the heat of the lava flow. He bows his head, buries his face in her hair. He can smell the flowers. She is so real and so warm. Blood and flesh made his own. He whispers the words, "It is time that I showed you."
He takes her hand and leads her back to the elevator. Rey is quiet as he presses the button for the floor below their rooms. He takes his lightsaber off his belt. He is the killer of Jedi and the husband of the last; he is the destroyer of the dead. Who would I destroy for you? Not children but worse. My idols. My family.
The doors open. Kylo ignites his saber and enters the room, awash now in its violent red glow. Rey holds his other hand and he keeps her behind him. He is guarding her; he will protect her from anything.
"You have hidden long enough," he says. A phantom threatened his wife. He is angry. There is no loyalty but to her. "Let me see you."
He opens himself to the dead. He calls them forth. The room is hauntingly quiet. Until a voice calls back:
"You have no need of that with me."
A man appears, tall and translucent and bathed in light. The same beautiful visage that Rey described. He and Kylo stand eye to eye; the mask stands between them. This is Anakin Skywalker, he thinks. Grandfather. The man who he spent so many nights praying to, revealing all his fragile hopes and hidden fears, waiting for a sign; the man he would have given anything to talk to—now, Kylo points his saber at his throat.
"You will not harm her."
Anakin raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I am sorry," he says, looking through Kylo to Rey. Kylo feels her move to peer around him. "I mistook you for someone else. My wife," he says. "You are wearing her necklace. For a moment I thought…" he shakes his head. "Please forgive me."
He knows Rey wants to talk but Kylo holds her back; he keeps his blade poised. "Is that all this is? Why you chose to appear to her and never me? Or did you sense the Light and think to destroy it?" He takes a step forward, his arm stretched over the mask. "I saw what you did. In the caves. The Jedi you tortured. Did you seek another to add to your collection?"
The ghost changes into the mutilated old man. He slumps back against the shelves that line the wall as if he could lean on them.
"You are right to think such things of me. There is no denying what I have done. I am still paying for them." He looks at Kylo with sad eyes. "And as for my silence to you, you can blame that extraordinary gift of yours. So many times I have wanted to speak to you. To let you know you were not alone. To try and convince you not to make my mistakes."
Kylo does not realize his sword arm is shaking until Rey rests her hand upon it and lowers the saber, switching it off.
"You are sorry," she says.
"Sorry?" The deformed face of his grandfather is scarred further by anguish. "Sorry is for when you overheat the caf. I am paying for my sins from beyond the grave. I must. This is how I grieve for her. It is the only way she can be at peace."
"Padme?" Rey has let go of Kylo. She is standing at the ghost's feet—when did she get over there? Kylo still grips his lightsaber. This is all so surreal, he can do little more than watch.
Anakin nods. "Her soul is not at rest. There are things I did—" he pauses. "She was not like you and Ben. She could not manipulate the Force. In death, her soul cried out in despair. It does not know how to stop."
"So you must help her," Rey says. "But how?"
"By repairing the mistakes of my past."
"And that will work?"
The ghost shrugs, a strangely human gesture for one no longer living. "There is no set path for things like this. And no guarantee I will ever find her. But I must try. Even if I spend eternity—"
"It would be enough," Rey says. "Even if you never see her again. It would be enough to know she is at peace."
Anakin gives a sad smile. "You are so much like her." He looks up at Kylo. "My grandson chose well."
Rey looks back at Kylo. "It is I who am blessed." She smiles and something inside Kylo clenches; it hurts. "How can we help?" she says, returning her gaze to Anakin.
"This is my burden and mine alone. I'm just thankful to have seen you both." The ghost straightens up, draped in the long gowns of Darth Vader. "I must go. There are many things left to do. But if you should have need of me I will come to you." He reaches for Rey and Kylo reacts; he will not touch her.
"It is okay," Rey says.
He stands behind her then and watches as his grandfather caresses Rey's cheek. "Brave, kind girl," he says, and the hand reaches back to rest on Kylo's shoulder. "My remarkable boy." Kylo feels his whole weight behind it, the burden of his legacy, his crushing lineage. Still Kylo stands tall. "You were always stronger than me," the ghost proudly says.
Kylo blinks. His eyes sting with wetness that trails down his cheeks. "Grandfather—"
Anakin shakes his head. "None of that. We will see each other again." And his hand fades from Kylo's shoulder and his outline transforms back into mist.
Kylo is staring at the darkened shelves, at his lifetime's collection that seems suddenly worthless now. Something turns. Small arms reach around him, hold him by the waist. A perfect face gazes up at him, more flawless than any mask.
"Ben?" a voice says.
Ben looks down at his wife. He is Ben now, he thinks. He always has been. "Yes?"
"There is something we should do."
They go back to the caves. There are no spirits now, only peace, only quiet, the gentle hum of the lava, gurgling intermittently like a contented infant. They kneel in the ash and Rey digs a small hole. She places something in his hands. Once his most precious possession. His grandfather's funeral mask.
"Bury it, Ben."
He does. He buries Darth Vader and he buries Kylo Ren. He takes off his gloves and lets his hands truly blacken. The earth feels warm and real on his skin, beneath the nails of his fingers. He sees Rey's hands beside him; she is digging another hole.
"What are you doing?" he says.
She struggles with the clasp of his grandmother's necklace. Ben reaches behind her, stilling her fingers as he slips it off. "Thank you," she says and places the necklace in the hole she has made, right beside the buried mask. "They should rest together. Until he can find her again."
He covers it with dirt. Rey takes flowers from her hair and lays them on the fresh graves.
"For sleep and fertility," Ben says. She looks at him and he takes her hand. "The needle blossoms."
"I didn't know."
"It does not matter."
"But it is right." Then she smiles. "Don't let the past die. Let it sleep."