Kylo wakes abruptly in the night. His heart is racing. His senses are immediately on alert. He hasn't awoken like this since his uncle lit a sword over his head. And that's a realization of itself: this is no bad dream he can't remember. This is the Force.
Something has happened.
Or maybe something will happen soon.
It's an urgent, unsettling queasiness deep in his marrow. Foretelling of danger. Of change. Of destiny shifting to rearrange the future. All bets are off and all assumptions are risky when the Force quakes and shudders like this. The anxiety it induces is hard to explain. But the urgency it engenders is impossible to ignore.
Kylo bounds from his bed to dress, dispensing with the mask but grabbing for his sword. He also pockets a small blaster he keeps hidden. Instinctively, he knows he will need to be armed. Somewhere on Naboo, Rey must feel this disturbance too. Hopefully, it will keep her safe. But what is the threat exactly?
Kylo gets his answer when he walks out his bedroom door to discover six heavily armed praetorians in the hallway.
They shouldn't be there.
He doesn't bother to ask any questions. Kylo just summons his power and snaps the necks of all six men simultaneously. All that training meant as preparation for Darth Vitiate comes in handy now.
Is this Vitiate finally making his move?
Could it be Hux?
Knowing better than to walk out his front door into the public areas of his Palace, Kylo heads for the open-air private terrace. And that's when he looks up to find a star destroyer parked in low orbit over the entire Palace and Senate complex. Like a looming shadow, the giant ship hangs in the Coruscant night sky, fully visible from the bright lights of the cityscape below. Kylo recognizes the markings. It's the Finalizer. Hux's old ship.
Hux. So this is Hux and his military cronies attempting a coup at long last. Those com calls from Hux last night must have been an attempt to lure him or maybe a diversion. Good thing he didn't take them.
A lot of people must be in on Hux's plot for this degree of mobilization, Kylo realizes. Incensed by the many traitors in his midst, his anger flares and his power surges. An angry Dark Skywalker is an awesome thing. Kylo's power has been growing for months now all in preparation for the threat of his father-in-law. But Hux and his cronies pale in comparison to Darth Vitiate. He can do this, Kylo assures himself. Then, he raises a hand and summons the Force. And this time, Kylo actually struggles for a moment when the Dark Side answers his call. Because when it kicks in, it is a heady rush that upsets his equilibrium. Yes, the Force is most definitely with him tonight.
The threat of the Finalizer must be neutralized. The ship could take out his whole Palace with its orbital autocannons or with a well-executed bombardment from its TIEs. And so, reminding himself that size doesn't matter, Kylo concentrates his rage and focuses his hate. Then he rips the massive capital ship out of the sky. He crashes its prow to impale at a sharp angle into the large green space adjacent to his Palace. The sound is deafening. It feels like all of Coruscant shudders from the impact. Immediately, the ship erupts in many explosions.
His gardeners will be pissed to find that when they arrive in the morning, Kylo smirks. But let that be a lesson to anyone who would dare challenge him. And truthfully, Kylo stands surprised and impressed by his feat. He has to take a deep breath and collect himself before things get out of control. Because a power move like that should utterly deplete him. But it doesn't. It is frankly a little scary how easy that felt. And . . . how good.
What's next? Kylo refuses to flee. He will not be herded off his Palace on his capital world. He's going to have to subdue the revolt here to reestablish control. And since any and all people are suspect, he may have to do it alone.
Knowing better than to get dragged into fighting inside, Kylo starts climbing up. He deploys the fire escape ladders and climbs for the Palace rooftop. From there, he can survey the landing pad and Palace grounds to assess what he's up against.
Well, fuck. Hux means business and he isn't taking any chances. There are tanks surrounding the Palace placed at regular intervals. All entrances and exits appear blocked. The landing pad is completely empty of ships. Hux must have wanted to ensure that there was no easy escape route off world. Everyone knows he's the best starpilot in the galaxy, and if he gets in a cockpit no one will catch him. In place of the parked ships, the brightly lit landing pad is full of personnel. A lot of personnel. It's mostly elite troopers in red and black armor, but Kylo spies some praetorians who must be in on the plot, too.
Other men clearly are not. There are several squads of regular stormtroopers with helmets off and hands up herded to the far corner. As Kylo watches, more of the workaday crew for his Palace are marched over to join them. These men and woman look to be the nighttime staff. And wait—is that Mrs. Faris? Kylo sees two elite troopers muscling his formidable head housekeeper into the detainment area. She's putting up a fight, Kylo sees. Even from this distance, he can see that she's giving her jailers a piece of her mind. It makes him smile. It also gives him an idea. So, Kylo sits tight on the rooftop and lets the traitors continue to determine for him who is friend and who is foe.
Peering down from above unnoticed, Kylo counts at least a hundred elite troopers outside his Palace. There are probably more inside scouring the interior for him. Sure enough, voices alert Kylo to the presence of men searching the private terrace he just left. Kylo waits for them to come up empty and head back inside. It's not yet time to reveal himself. He's going to watch how this develops.
More captured staff members are now marched out onto the landing platform. It's a motley crew of more regular troopers in white armor, overnight maintenance and housekeeping staff in jumpsuits, and even two praetorians. They join the ranks of the existing detainees who are regime loyalists. It's not much, Kylo decides, but it's the closest thing he has to an army.
Elite troopers begin exiting the palace to confer. They must be flummoxed that their inside search has come up empty. The officers in charge—who are too far away for Kylo to recognize—are visibly concerned. Plus, the fate of the Finalizer has everyone spooked. The fiery stern of the star destroyer poking high into the air is visible to everyone. There is a lot of frantic pointing and gesturing.
Now that it is determined that Leader Ren is not inside, the traitors begin searching elsewhere. Speeder craft appear to shine floodlights down on the Palace grounds. And really? Do they think he is hiding in the bushes? Kylo is almost insulted. But it appears time is running out for him to skulk on the rooftop. A speeder begins canvassing the far end of the Palace building from above. That means Kylo is about to be discovered. So, emboldened by his success scuttling the Finalizer, Kylo tries that same trick again. With the help of the Force, he grabs the approaching speeder and hurls it hard into the ranks of the traitors milling on the landing pad below. It's so simple that Kylo repeats the feat with all six speeders he sees. Plucking them up with an invisible hand and then hurling them into the tank positions.
Panic ensues.
No one knows where he is still. They don't know where to shoot or where to look. Kylo enjoys the confusion. It's almost comical from his vantage point.
Next, Kylo selects officers below one by one to snap their necks with the Force. It dismantles the chain of command and engenders more chaos. For he is an unseen attacker that no one knows how to defend against. And suddenly, there are far more minions to follow orders than leaders to make decisions.
There are casualties everywhere on the landing pad, but there are still plenty of hostiles visible. Plus, who knows how many remain inside the Palace. As powerful as he is, Kylo knows better than to attempt to subdue all the traitors on his own. It's time to put his plan into motion to assemble an impromptu defense.
Kylo begins moving along the rooftop, heading for the far end where the loyal members of the Palace staff are standing with their hands up. That's eight floors below him. It's way too far to jump. What he really needs is a grappling hook from one of those downed troopers' utility belts to use to repel down the Palace edifice. But he's in luck. Up comes another speeder. And rather than toss this craft into the crowd of traitors below, Kylo drags it towards him with the Force. Then he lights his sword and dispenses with the three occupants, tossing them out while he climbs in. Then Kylo just rides down to the surface.
"Looking for me?" he growls as he jumps out.
There are only about eight troopers left guarding the Palace detainees. Kylo takes them out easily. But now he is exposed to his enemies. His iconic sword has not gone unnoticed. A hail of blaster bolts launches his way from the main group. Kylo freezes them all with a blink as he starts assembling his reinforcements.
Quite a few of the household staff he has just liberated look intimidated by the destruction and chaos surrounding them. These are civilians, not trained soldiers. One housemaid looks to be in near hysterics. But at least some of these people could be useful.
"Troopers, fall in with me," Kylo orders to the men in white armor missing helmets. "The rest of you who want to fight, grab a gun from a dead man and start firing." Kylo directs his next words to his housekeeper standing in her nightgown with her hair down. She reminds him strongly of his mother but she is no general like Leia Organa. "Everyone else find cover and hide."
Mrs. Faris takes umbrage at this suggestion. "My father was an Imperial Corporal. He taught me how to shoot." To underscore her point, Mrs. Faris nabs a heavy-duty blaster from a fallen traitor, hefts it like an old pro, flipping the safety off with her thumb before she begins firing away. His housekeeper yells at the crying housemaid over her barrage of surprisingly accurate cover fire, "Get ahold of yourself! There will be time for that later."
And who can argue with that sentiment? With his small makeshift army of ceremonial troopers who usually hang out in hallways giving directions, maintenance workers who are better with power tools than blasters, and domestic staff who are normally seen and not heard, Kylo proceeds to take back his Palace. The task is surprisingly easy now that the onsite coup chain of command has been decimated. It's the best illustration ever of how much leadership matters. With a star destroyer ripped from orbit, senior officers choked, and speeders and tanks tossed around like toys all courtesy of the magical Force, the remaining traitors lose confidence fast.
But that doesn't mean they are giving up. These men all know that if they don't die today, they will die soon. "No quarter," Kylo orders grimly. "Shoot anyone who flees." He refuses to let anyone escape to fight another day. But how deep does this conspiracy go? Kylo worries that this attack was way too well planned and equipped to be the work of a handful of men. He knows he will have his hands full investigating this revolt. But first, he has to retake his Palace and get to its command center to start evaluating things.
There's no way to keep this quiet. Not with a star destroyer impaled on his front lawn for all Coruscant to see. The local authorities have appeared to deal with that mess. Fireships are on duty, along with fleets of ambulance speeders. Have the Coruscant cops figured out what's going on? They have. And that adds to Kylo's ragtag army as he conscripts them to his cause.
An hour later as dawn is breaking, his Palace is his again. Kylo interrogates several traitors who are wounded but not dead. It gives him a few leads, but no sense of the larger conspiracy. The men whose minds he read were too far down the pecking order to have interacted with the key conspirators. But Kylo is starting to doubt their leader was Hux. Armitage Hux would not have delegated the dirty work at the Palace to others. He would have been here himself.
Kylo heads now to investigate the senior crew from the downed Finalizer. That effort yields a few names and Hux isn't one of them. But General Jerard is. And that gets Kylo pondering all sorts of possibilities. He decides he needs to talk to Hux. Even if his Chancellor isn't a conspirator, Kylo is certain Hux knows plenty about this coup attempt that he hasn't shared. So he deputizes the few loyal praetorians he has remaining to find his Chancellor. Find me Hux, Kylo orders. Track the position sensor he wears. That's how Hux had found Kylo bleeding in the Starkiller woods years ago. If Hux is part of the coup, he definitely won't be wearing the tracker. But if he is, bring him in.
Hux's position sensor reveals a remote location on Naboo. He must be with Rey and maybe also with Snoke, Kylo scowls. He's not sure how to interpret that information. So he dispatches the praetorians and a confirmed loyal squad of troopers to Naboo to investigate. Then Kylo turns his attention back to assessing the current state of his military. He wants the location and commanding officers for all capital ships accounted for, as well as the status of all major garrisons scattered throughout the galaxy. And that's harder than it sounds with ships entering and exiting hyperspace, and wide-ranging time zones across different sectors of the galaxy.
The daytime Palace professional staff begins to arrive now. Kylo takes each of his aides aside to interrogate them personally. He will not risk any further disloyalty. All the staffers he tests are loyal. They'd be fools to show up if they were not. Kylo decides that any absent personnel are to be presumed hostile until proven otherwise. He's not taking any chances.
The rush of combat fades fast and the difficult task of figuring out what's happening begins. But Kylo is determined that he will not win the battle but lose the war. This conspiracy went deep and he will need to root out all the traitors lest they try again. Punishment for this sort of thing must be swift, decisive, and merciless.
Hours into the fog of war comes news that gets his attention. "Hux is dead." An aide offers over a datapad. "Look here, Sir. Here's the proof from the mission to Naboo." It's a grisly closeup picture of Armitage Hux lying dead.
Kylo's eyes narrow and his lips tighten. "Who sent this?"
"They're on the comlink now, Sir."
Kylo grabs the comlink and growls, "This is Ren. Tell me what you've got."
The comlink crackles with static before the transmission clears. "We found Hux dead. Looks like he was killed by our own."
"Conspirators?"
"Probably. But there's only dead men here, Sir, and they don't talk. But they are elite troopers like the rest of Jerard's men at the Palace."
"Arrest the leadership at the local garrison. They'll talk." Someone approved those soldiers' activities. Kylo plans to get to the bottom of this plot, if he has to read a thousand minds to do it.
"Yes, Sir."
"There's another picture," the aide standing next to him swipes once on the datapad. Now, Kylo sees a full length shot of dead Hux. "It must be dark there because the lighting is bad. But you can tell it's the Chancellor."
Dead Hux is not what holds Kylo's attention. He is focused on another person's hand in the far corner of the picture. It looks to be a woman's hand and it has a distinctive blue and gold ring on the fourth finger.
Kylo swallows hard. Then he starts blinking fast. Could it be? His heart is pounding at the possibility.
The voice on the other end of the comlink keeps talking. "There must have been a chase and a fight. We came across lots of bodies along the way. Leader, Sir, we found Hux in a very strange place. It's some alien cave or something out here in the countryside."
"Gungan?" Kylo suggests as he tries to enlarge the picture. Yes, that's his mother's ring. Fuck. He has a bad feeling about this.
"Gungan? I don't think so. But it's very old. Hux wasn't alone. There is a civilian woman here among the dead."
"The woman in the picture with the blue ring?" Kylo chokes out.
"Affirmative. Shot in the back. In the chest too. Looks like close range. Same as Hux. They were executed."
They were executed. "Fuck!" Kylo swears aloud now under his breath. A long silence follows while Kylo tries but fails to form the words to ask for a picture of the dead woman. Because that will confirm what he already knows. That Rey is dead. That she died running from his enemies with Hux as her protector. With a heavy heart, Kylo realizes now that he got it wrong. Hux hadn't been a conspirator, he had been an ally all along. Warning him about Jerard. Heading to check on Rey. Had Hux accidentally led the traitors to Rey? Or had they known where to find her? Kylo will probably never know that answer. And maybe it doesn't matter. Because, oh Gods, Rey is dead . . . she's dead . . . .
Where the fuck was Vitiate? Why hadn't he been there to save her?
"Sir? Are you still there, Sir?"
"I'm here." And now, another awful thought occurs to him. "Did you find a baby?"
"Negative."
"It would be a newborn baby boy," he half-whispers.
"Negative. But we'll look around some more. This place is a maze and it's very dim. There are lots of places to hide a body."
"Keep searching," Kylo rasps.
He is torn. This is not the time to run off to Naboo. Kylo knows he needs to solidify his control, fully investigate the coup attempt, and assess the remaining threat. He also needs to oversee the media response to this very public event and probably appear publicly himself to assure everyone he's unharmed and in charge. No, this is definitely not the time to drop everything to run to Naboo. And besides, there's nothing he can do for Rey now.
"Sir?" The man on the other end of the comlink is looking for further instructions. And that's when yet another aide holding a datapad approaches Kylo to interrupt. "Sir?"
"Hold on, Trooper."
The aide reports, "This was uploaded to the holonet half an hour ago. It's gone viral on all major worlds. We just noticed it." The aide taps the datapad and Kylo watches the grainy, dark tape of Hux's execution. It's a minute long at most.
"Those fools made a martyr of him," Kylo decides. Then he watches the tape a second time with the sound turned way up. The background noise is a baby crying. His baby crying. Fuck. Kylo closes his eyes and exhales. This keeps getting worse.
He has heard and seen enough secondhand. Kylo makes a snap decision. "Find me a shuttle," he barks to an underling. "Get it fully fueled and armed." Then, he issues orders into the comlink. "Don't touch anything. Don't move the bodies. I'm coming."
Kylo has to see for himself. To understand what happened. It's a very risky thing to leave Coruscant mere hours after a failed revolt, but this is important. Kylo takes a few senior staff members and a squad of troopers with him. Then, he practically melts the shuttle's hyperdrive to get to Naboo.
Three hours later, Kylo leads his troopers through an ancient stone doorway in a wooded copse in the remote Naboo lake country. The troopers behind him flash lights to illuminate the way as they follow the path the first responders had taken to find Hux's beacon.
"What is this place? And what's with the alien language? It's fucking spooky in here," the guy on the left grumbles. His men don't know where they are, of course.
But Kylo does. "You're in a Sith temple. That's Kittat, the ancient language of the Sith. Those are names of great Sith Masters." Kylo's eyes slant to his right where a trooper's lantern lights up a vicious curse engraved on the stone wall. It a florid death wish for the Galactic Republic, written in such melodramatic terms that Kylo might roll his eyes were he not so focused on the grim task at hand.
"Why would Hux be here?" a trooper asks.
"He was led here. She led him here. Probably to hide." Vitiate must have told Rey about this place. Kylo explored his share of surviving Sith temples during his years as Snoke's Apprentice. But he never knew about this one.
"Why would they want to hide here? There's no cover. There's no exit. It seems more like a trap," the trooper reasons.
"I guess it was the best choice in the circumstances," another trooper volunteers, and Kylo wishes his men would shut the fuck up. Because none of this matters. All that matters is that Rey is dead and he's about to see the evidence for himself. Each passing footfall increases his dread at what he will find.
They round five more corners and come upon a small room. This room is brightly lit with artificial floodlights the local men have brought in. An investigative unit is here, giving the room the look of a crime scene, not a battlefield.
"Leader, Sir, welcome." The ranking man nervously salutes and begins his report. It's a rush of words about estimated time of death and cause of death for Hux. Kylo ignores the speaker and his dead Chancellor and surprises everyone when he crouches beside the body of the anonymous woman. She lies face down. As reported, she was shot in the back. But the kill shot was higher. The exit flashburn to her torso is huge. More than enough to fry all her vital organs instantly. But at least it was quick, Kylo consoles himself.
He takes a deep breath. Then gently, he rolls the woman over. It's like he feared. It is Rey.
She died with yellow eyes. They are still open and her mouth is a round "oh" of shock and pain. Rey must have been roused from sleep. She's wearing a bathrobe and nightgown that look like something his mother would own. Her body is stiff and cold. She's been dead far longer than the few hours it took him to get here. And that tells him that Rey's death was the disturbance in the Force that woke him in the night. Her death warned him in time to save his Empire. But it was already too late to save her.
"Rey. Oh, R-Rey."
The words escape his lips in a whisper. Kylo brushes her tangled hair back from her face and feels the despair welling up within him. He is—was—so angry with Rey for betraying him. For leaving him. But he didn't want this end for her. If they could not be together, then Kylo was perfectly fine with Rey living in exile. That way, there would always be the hope that she might one day regain her senses and wake up to the menace that her father truly is. As long as Rey was alive, there was the possibility—no matter how remote—that he and Rey might reconcile. But now, that hope is gone.
It's a lot to process. Kylo is enraged at his enemies, crushed by Rey's loss, and fearful for his future now. So too he is guilty, regretful, and hopeless. Kylo feels every Dark emotion as he reacts to her loss.
Everyone around him has been focused on Hux. Apparently, no one has given any thought to his civilian companion until Leader Ren showed up. Now, everyone is watching curiously as Kylo gathers her into his lap, clasping her to his chest as he closes his eyes and slowly rocks back and forth. "Rey."
He buries his face in her hair and sobs. He's always been the emotional type. Far too emotional for the Jedi life his family planned for him. Given to obsessions and extremes that his Dark Master rarely bothered to temper. Kylo learned long ago to ride the crest of his emotions, to give vent to his feelings in words, in violence, or in the Force. But after the drama of today's coup attempt, the initial euphoria of victory has given way to uncertainty and suspicion, and now this soul-crushing news is confirmed true . . . Kylo Ren is undone. He has never felt so alone. So beset by troubles.
The room falls silent now in the face of his raw grief.
"Did you find a baby?" Kylo lifts his face to find the eyes of the ranking man from on-world. "Did you find my son?"
The man visibly gulps at this reveal. "We didn't find the body of a baby, but we did find this." The man snaps his fingers at an underling who steps forward to display a dirty pacifier.
Kylo looks at it bleakly. It just confirms what that footage of Hux's death had revealed: his son was here. And that means the conspirators took him. And now that their bid to depose Kylo has failed, his son's life will most likely be forfeit. Maybe they let his son live so that he could be used as bait or leverage. But those tactics are risky now that Kylo has effectively put down the initial revolt. At this point, the boy's kidnappers will be on the run and no one wants a newborn baby to slow them down or identify them.
"We'll find him, Sir," the lead man says staunchly.
Kylo shoots down this false hope. "He's probably already dead. If he's not, he will be soon."
No one contradicts his blunt reasoning. They all just look away uncomfortably.
Kylo gazes again at the pacifier and says forlornly in a choked voice, "May the Force be with you, son." And remembering how he had once told Rey to get rid of the child, Kylo feels ashamed. For he has failed in every way as a father. He had been far worse than Han Solo. Kylo hadn't wanted the boy, he had never met the boy, he had never supported him nor helped his mother. Instead, he exiled and disinherited him. Kylo had even worried about the boy as a future rival. And some small part of him had even been jealous of the love Kylo knew Rey was showering on him. The great irony is that it is his boy's relationship to him that will cost the child his life. That innocent baby will die because he is Kylo Ren's kid. Because he is born a Skywalker prince with the magic Force.
It is the same for Rey. She was so young. Perhaps too young for the roles she would play and decisions she would make. And now, like her son, Rey is dead before her time. That is how all Skywalker women end. His great-grandmother made it to middle age before she died horribly in her son's arms. His grandmother didn't even make it to thirty before she died mysteriously in the care of the Jedi. His own mother should have had decades left to live, but she succumbed to war injuries. And now, Rey dies in her early twenties. The Skywalker women live long enough to birth the next generation. That's the only guarantee they get. The rest is up for grabs.
Poor Rey never got her normal life and a family. Kylo knows now that he too will never achieve his happily ever after. And if the baby is not recovered, then the line of the Skywalker Chosen Ones ends with him. There was only one woman for Kylo and now she's gone forever. There won't be any more children.
Vitiate will just have to create another family of unwitting pawns, Kylo thinks grimly. But why the Hell did he let this happen? It doesn't make sense. Vitiate just forfeited two of the three people who might have let him out.
Kylo glances over at dead Hux. Whatever Hux's motivations were in this coup, he had clearly tried to help Rey. But why would she have taken refuge here? Kylo squints into the bright floodlights a moment. It registers somewhere deep in his mind that they remind him of something. And that's when insight dawns.
"Kill the lights!" Kylo orders suddenly.
Several confused looking men follow out the command. No one among these laymen understands why he needs darkness to see what he's looking for. But they obey and the room becomes very dim.
Sure enough, there is a faintly shimmering Force portal close to where Rey had been killed. The blinding brightness of the floodlights plus Kylo's teary eyes had obscured the teasing entrance. But now, it is obvious. His men can't see it. But Kylo sees the blurry, churning, almost pixelated look to the spot that reveals a passageway into another reality. He stands to his feet now to approach to be sure. Yes, this is a Force portal just like the one on Mustafar.
Now, Kylo understands Rey's objective in the temple. She had come seeking sanctuary in the World Between Worlds. And she had nearly made it to safety before she had been killed. A few more feet, and Rey would have slipped away from this reality. How had she known about the World Between Worlds? Probably from Vitiate. Kylo and Rey had never discussed it. It was supposed to be a surprise for the trip to Mustafar Castle they never took.
"Put her onboard," Kylo announces as he motions to Rey's body. "Bring Hux along too," he decides as an afterthought.
"Yes, Sir."
"Tell the pilot to set course for the Zakuul system beyond the Rim."
"Not back to Coruscant, Sir?"
"No." He has business to settle first. Kylo refuses to live in fear of the hidden Sith any longer. He will find Vitiate in his prison and confront him. Kylo refuses to be his pawn. But he also refuses to waste effort reasserting control of his Empire only to cede it to Vitiate in the end.
The trip to the Zakuul system consumes time Kylo does not have to spare. The scope of the coup plot is still emerging, but what Kylo has uncovered is not encouraging. The revolt is more than just an attack on his Palace. A sizeable chunk of his military has gone AWOL. General Jerard is nowhere to be found. He's off the grid with half the First Order Mid Rim fleet. Other capital ships and garrisons in the Outer Rim are not responding either. All in all, there is way too much firepower unaccounted for at the moment. It doesn't take a genius to realize this revolt is not over yet.
But still, Kylo doggedly heads for Zakuul. He consumes himself with his counter-coup efforts for the journey. If he focuses hard, he can almost forget his dead wife lying in the back and his missing baby son he never met.
When the shuttle exits hyperspace, Kylo finds the giant metal orb of Mortis awaiting him. It looks like an enormous cage to his eye. And that's appropriate considering it's the eons-old jail for an uber-powerful Sith Lord. The shuttle is immediately drawn into the ephemeral realm of the Force. Kylo and everyone else onboard immediately lose consciousness. Some undetermined time later, Kylo blinks awake next to his dazed pilot. The rest of the men and women onboard are regaining their wits as well. They crowd into the cockpit. Everyone looks to him for an explanation.
"What is this place?" the pilot speaks up first. He's frowning as he punches at the shuttle controls. "It's not on any of our charts."
Kylo's answer reassures no one. "We are in the Force. This is not a place on any star chart. You cannot navigate here. You have to be welcomed."
No one knows how to respond to that befuddling statement. But his dogged chief of staff asks pointedly, "Why are we here, Supreme Leader?"
"And who the Hell is that guy?" his thoroughly spooked pilot chimes in as he points to a screen showing an external view of the shuttle.
Kylo peers over the pilot's shoulder to recognize the figure of Vitiate. This must be the man himself, not one of his posturing projection versions. The blood red swords and sleek black armor are gone. The ancient Sith is swathed in black velvet robes trimmed in silver. It's eerily like how Kylo remembers a version of his grandfather dressing from a long-ago jaunt into the World Between Worlds. It was a style that had impressed him, so Kylo had copied it for himself.
Kylo blinks at the unexpected recurring visual motif. The strange coincidences and persistent patterns of the Skywalkers have a meaning that eludes him. But Kylo sees that the fashion he aped from his grandfather was a reflection of another man entirely. And in this too, Kylo feels somewhat duped. Nothing is ever what it seems at first glance in his family.
"Sir? Shall we treat him as hostile?"
"He is hostile. But you can't kill him. He's immortal."
"Sir?"
"He's who I came to see."
"We'll cover you," the lead trooper speaks up immediately.
"No. Stand down. You'll only get yourself killed. He's a Sith Master," Kylo reveals.
Those around him exchange glances. "Well, shit," the lead trooper exhales under his breath, pretty much summing things up for everyone. "This is not our day, Leader."
"Yes," Kylo agrees wholeheartedly.
"I thought the Sith were dead," his chief of staff frowns.
"All except him. He can't die. That's why he's here. In jail." Kylo turns now to the lead trooper. "Stand by at the top of the ramp with Hux's body. I will deal with the Sith myself." He casts stern eyes around the group. "No one interferes."
Then Kylo heads to the back of the ship to collect his dead wife.
"Leader, Sir, are you sure this is wise?" his nagging chief of staff worries as he follows.
"He's not going to kill me," Kylo says over his shoulder. "He needs me." Vitiate needs him more than ever now that Rey is dead and the baby is lost. Now, there is no one else capable of balancing the Force to let him out. And that advantage is what has emboldened Kylo to confront his nemesis on his own turf. He hefts Rey's body wrapped in his cape and marches out of his shuttle.
"I have foreseen this day," old Vitiate rumbles solemnly before Kylo is even halfway down the ramp. It's annoying how much gravitas this guy has. "The Force never lies," his foe says smugly before Kylo has fully emerged from his ship.
That 'I told you so' attitude grates. "Yeah?" Kylo jeers. "Did you foresee this?" He yanks back the portion of his cape that covers Rey's face, revealing her open, unblinking Sith eyes and terrified expression. She had died in agony, and it shows.
"No," Vitiate answers softly. "I did not." He moves closer to gaze down on Rey's body, raising a hand to brush at her cold cheek. His gloating attitude is gone. Suddenly, the Sith Emperor looks very displeased. "Who did this? How did it happen?" Vitiate's own eyes flash yellow now, something Kylo never witnessed in Snoke. It's a bit intimidating, actually. For it is a glimpse of the true die-hard Sith that lies beneath his calm, wiseman veneer.
"I found her dead in a Sith temple on Naboo with Hux."
"And the baby? Where is Carl?"
"I don't know." Kylo looks away as he laments, "She didn't even have a weapon on her. It looks like she was roused from bed and fled."
"She would have taken the baby with her—"
"There was no sign of him. Either he's dead or he's a hostage. But he's lost." Kylo gives vent to his rage now as he passes judgement, "Some father you are! Where the Hell were you when she needed you? She was alone and unprotected with a newborn! There were dead men all over that temple! Jerard had multiple strike teams pursuing her!" And even as the words leave his lips, Kylo is uncomfortably aware that the same condemnation could be made of himself. He blames Vitiate, but he also blames himself. Rey had been caught between her conflicting loyalties to her husband and to her father. In the end, she died for it.
Vitiate looks livid as his eyes flash yellow again. "I did not know—"
"Don't act so surprised," Kylo snaps. "Surely you felt her death."
"Strange that I did not," Vitiate answers, sounding puzzled. "But then, I was not Force bonded with her." The Sith purses his lips with displeasure as he resumes his questions. "Hux tried to save her?"
"Yes. He must have been tipped off."
"He is dead too?"
"Yes." Kylo turns back to the shuttle and nods. Two troopers descend the ramp carrying the body of his Chancellor as Vitiate watches with a deepening frown. The flashburn to Hux's chest is enormous. That guy died horribly. Kylo almost feels sorry for him.
But his eyes narrow as he now accuses, "You knew, didn't you? You knew there was a plot! Were you behind it? Was that you pretending to be Jerard? Are those your forces who have disappeared to some secret rendezvous point?"
"No." Vitiate's denial is unequivocal.
"I don't believe you," Kylo retorts.
"You should. Because I would never have endangered Rey and the baby. All along, I have been on your side," his father-in-law argues. "But you are too stubborn and insecure to realize it."
That response is maddening. "Liar! Your only side is yourself!" Kylo looks his enemy directly in the eyes and warns, "Do not underestimate my power." Today he pulled a star destroyer out of orbit. "Whatever you are plotting, I will defeat you. Bring it on, Sith, because you have met your match. I will get my revenge," he vows.
The Sith Emperor shoots his Apprentice a stern look of warning. "That is your grief talking, so I will excuse it. I understand your anger, Apprentice." Vitiate's eyes keep wandering down to Rey in his arms. "Today, I lost a daughter and a grandson—"
"And I lost a wife and a son and I nearly lost my Empire!" As it is, Kylo may return home to a civil war. The galaxy could topple into chaos again. All thanks again to the Skywalkers.
Talk of the Empire does not go over well in this context. "You fool!" his old Master hisses. "Empires come and go, wars begin and end, but there was only one Rey! And now, your only son and heir, the culmination of the two lines of the Chosen Ones, is lost! That means more than any Empire ever will!" Darth Vitiate is livid in his disapproval. "Only now at the end do you begin to appreciate what you threw away! The ultimate achievement is not power, it is love. And Rey and Carl gave you an opportunity to combine them both. All that potential, all that Force, all that family. It was everything a man of your position could want. But you cast it aside like a proud fool!"
Kylo is having none of it. "You turned her against me!"
"You have done that yourself! Scorning her, rejecting her, divorcing her, abandoning her! She did not deserve this fate-"
"I leave you your handiwork," irate Kylo interrupts. He's heard enough. He stoops to lay Rey on the ground, arranging her bloody carbon-scored nightclothes as best as he can for modesty. He deliberately avoids looking at Rey's face. But it's too late to unsee what he has seen. Kylo knows for certain that the image of her pained death mask expression and yellow eyes will haunt his dreams.
And that gives him pause. He sits back on his heels to process the moment, gulping the whole time to keep his composure. The enormity of what has occurred is starting to sink in. He can no longer busy himself with work to pretend it didn't happen. Fuck. Kylo needs to get out of here before he unmans himself before his nemesis. So, he climbs to his feet and motions the two troopers who brought out Hux back into the shuttle.
"I can help you," Darth Vitiate offers. "Apprentice, you need help."
"I don't want your help!" Kylo explodes. He turns away and mutters, "I don't want anything from you," as he heads for the ramp.
But the wily Sith sorcerer is undeterred. His voice is an insidious baritone purr from behind. "I have the power to save the one you love."
Fuck. In his anger and grief, Kylo had forgotten about that. He stops in his tracks.
"I have the power to save the one you love," Darth Vitiate repeats, dangling before him the forbidden fruit of the unnatural Dark power of the Sith. "I can bring her back."
Can he do that? Can Vitiate truly raise the dead? Kylo hesitates. He is torn. This is the ultimate temptation.
His old Master knows it, too. "I have the power to save the one you love. With your Jedi healing skills and my Sith resurrection secrets, we can make Rey as good as new. If we work together, I know we can save her," the Sith mastermind promises, adding the insidious platitude, "No one is ever really gone."
The breath catches in Kylo's throat as he considers. And now, the crafty Eternal Emperor spells it out. "I have the power to save the one you love. And you have the power to release me."
There it is. The quid pro quo Kylo has long been anticipating. But in exchange for freeing this menace to wreak havoc on the galaxy, Kylo is not being offered his Empire back. He's being offered Rey.
He whirls and shouts, "No! No deal!"
"Are you sure about that?" his foe wheedles.
And for a brief moment, Kylo wants to second guess himself. To give into the fantasy scenario in which Rey is revived and healed and things are back as they were before Vitiate. Just the two of them in love living in his Palace. But too much has happened now. That dream died over a year ago. He and Rey were over long before she turned up dead in a temple.
"No." Kylo says it again to bolster his conviction. "No. No deal." He won't be manipulated into a bad decision. And now, more than ever, he's convinced that Vitiate was behind the coup. "You failed!" he gloats miserably. "You failed! Your plan didn't work and you killed Rey and the child in the process. I hope you're happy."
Lord Vitiate bristles. "Those men were not acting under my orders."
"And yet they achieved all the aims you have warned about," Kylo observes coldly. "The threat of losing the Empire and an attack on my family in exile. How convenient," Kylo insinuates.
"Do not blame me," the Sith growls back. "You reap what you sow, Apprentice."
And that's an outrageous statement coming from this meddling puppet master bored from too long in Force jail. "No," Kylo corrects bitterly, "I reap what you sow! Isn't that the whole point of my family?" For the Skywalkers, like Rey, were created to achieve this man's objectives. One and all, the Chosen Ones are pawns in his galactic chess game of power. "That ends with me! I refuse to do your bidding! I'm going back to rule the galaxy and you can rot in here!"
Darth Vitiate is most displeased with that response. His voice is thick sarcasm. "Oh, you are Revan all over again. He was as committed to the Republic that loathed him as you are to the First Order Empire which holds you in contempt. Each of you full of zeal for ideals but not for those you pretend to love."
"A new Revan is what you wanted, right? You reap what you sow as well," Kylo jeers. "Be careful what you wish for, Sith."
"You are making the greatest mistake of your life, Apprentice. That Empire is nothing."
"It's all I have left!" Resentment drips from Kylo's lips. "You lured away my wife to danger. The son I never met is likely dead as a result. The Empire is all that remains."
"For now."
Kylo face hardens at this not-so-subtle threat. "I will not set you free! This is your punishment for betraying your trusting daughter!" Kylo gulps back hot tears as he exclaims, "She believed in you! All along I told her it was foolish, but she wanted so badly for you to be the father she always wanted and never had." Rey had gone looking for a father in Han Solo and then in Luke Skywalker. Either man would have been a better choice than Vitiate. But Rey couldn't see that.
Then, a thought occurs to Kylo. He lays down a challenge. "This is your chance to make things right. Prove your innocence by reviving her."
The Sith Master shakes his head. "I need your help. I can revive her with Darkness but I need your Light to heal her. There are no medical facilities here."
"If you are as powerful as you say, then you can do both yourself. You preached balance to me and then to Rey. Well, practice what you preach. Balance yourself!" Kylo's lip curls as he sneers, "If Darth Vader could find Light deep within him, then you can too."
Vitiate looks rather humbled to admit to the limitations of his power. "Do you not think that I have tried? I cannot." The old adage is true in this case: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. That's why Vitiate created the Skywalkers in the image of the one man he knew who had come close to balancing the Force. Because Darth Vitiate himself cannot do it, and they both know why. The ancient Emperor looks away and sighs ruefully as he confirms, "I am too Dark."
"Then you belong here," Kylo concludes bitterly.
Mortis is a very effective prison, Kylo reflects. The Jedi Grandmaster and the Sith Apprentice who devised this scenario knew what they were doing. For all Vitiate's enormous Dark power cannot help him escape. And the Darker he gets, the farther he gets from freedom. Moreover, even were a compassionate Jedi lured here to help out of pity, they too would be incapable of springing the Sith. For unlike the stories in which only an innocent can claim the girl or the grail or whatever the elusive prize is, it takes a sinner to free this Dark god. Because no Jedi pure in the Light will ever balance the Force.
Kylo realizes now that the rigid religions of the Force were what kept Vitiate penned up. For so long as the Force remained either Light or Dark, with no overlap, there was no one capable of helping him. Kylo understands now why Vitiate had wanted Darth Vader to destroy the Sith as the Jedi Chosen One. He understands the true fear Snoke had of Luke Skywalker and the rise of the New Jedi Order. Kylo seethes as he recalls his Master's many long lectures. Because for all the lofty talk of bringing an equilibrium to the universe and letting old things die, balancing the Force was always only about him. All along Vitiate had an agenda, and it was himself. And that is a very different agenda from Kylo's.
In fact, Darth Vitiate now softly admits, "You are my last hope."
"Balance yourself!" Kylo throws this parting shot over his shoulder as he strides for the shuttle ramp. He is anxious to be gone. He knows times passes differently here in Mortis than in the real world. With his Empire in disarray, there is not a moment to lose. Plus, Kylo knows if he lingers longer, he might cave to Vitiate on Rey. That temptation is very real.
The wily prisoner Sith is not giving up. He calls out to sweeten the deal as Kylo literally flees before he can change his mind. "I can teach you power you can only dream about! There are no limits to what you can do with the Force. We will be equals! Think about."
But Kylo keeps climbing up the ramp. He knows any deal he makes with this guy will have strings attached. Kylo put away Vader's mask almost two years ago, determined to be his own man. He will not be beholden to Vitiate going forward. The time for teaching has passed. It's time for action now. He is the mighty Kylo Ren, and he's going to save the galaxy from the breakaway hardline First Order fascists. He owes that to his dead wife who once fought for the Resistance. If Rey is watching now in the Force, Kylo hopes she understands. He is not being stubborn, he is doing the right thing even though it will cost him his own happiness.
END PART IV
More to come . . .
