"That space the Evil-one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good; of enmity disarmed"
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
The statue stands at forty-two feet high. Cast in beskar and plated in gold, it depicts a man with a muscular naked torso, ancient ceremonial robes wrapped around his waist and draped over a shoulder, a shield in one hand and a scroll in the other. The face does not smile in the traditional sense, but there is the gleeful hint of a sneer.
"Such a striking likeness, my Lord. If it should please you—"
"Please me?" The Supreme Leader of the Known Galaxy rises from his throne. A Twi'lek concubine is unseated from his lap with the movement, tumbling to the steps of the high dais to lie amongst her sisters in servitude. Various species of female flesh are traversed as he makes his descent. "You think this should please me?" he says.
"I…"
Hux stops before the stooped body of Cescan Wylde, words having finally failed him. The corpulent courtier somehow survived the bombardment of the palace on Coruscant, like a diehard bug. Still, he is not without his scars.
"Rise," Hux says, and the foolish man does.
His round face is partly covered by a ceramic mask painted with a floral design to match the colors of the court, as well as his always garish attire.
"There is no need to be shy."
"My Lord?"
"Show me your true face."
Wylde momentarily hesitates but, like all well-trained sycophants, he is otherwise quick to obey. He unclips the mask from around his head. Hux can hear the horrified gasps of the slave girls behind him; he will have to teach them how to stay quiet later. Perhaps now he can make his point.
Leaning down, he literally does, his index finger thrust towards the statue. "I want that monstrosity melted down until it resembles the burnt blob of fat you are."
The faintly yellowed eyes of Wylde are still visible from within the layers of mutilated flesh; skin grafts could only go so far. Still, his eyelids work as he slowly blinks.
"Forgive my grave insult, I—"
Hux tosses what is left in his wine glass into the courtier's face. "Go!"
He does not bother to watch the sad little waddle of retreat, though the grinding gears of the conveyor that brought in the statue audibly struggle backwards under Wylde's desperate command.
"How hard is it to find some artistic vision? A degree of competence? Where is my respect?!"
Hux's chalice lands in the large pond that forms the center of his vast courtyard. The aquatic creatures and naked women in the water disperse. Stomping back up to his throne, he grabs the arm of a humanoid female with light blonde hair. "Have my chambers prepared and be waiting. On your knees."
She nods and hurries in the same direction Wylde and the statue left. The statue's vile silhouette is still visible through the many rows of high columns. This wing of the palace survived the attack mostly unscathed and Hux has made it his home since taking back the throne on Coruscant. All memories of the previous incumbent have been erased, save for the most damaged buildings, which have since been razed. He will remake it all in his image. No cold black aesthetic. No superstitious homages to magical powers and beings. Here resides only monuments to true power and civility. To might and prestige. To Armitage Hux, the most powerful man in the galaxy.
He retakes his fated seat, straightening out his black cape with red silk lining, fixing his jewel-encrusted epaulets and matching buttons on his gold-threaded uniform. He could not help but to retain the military influence of his blazer and pants. He is still head of an active war machine after all, as well as king. Ah, yes. He reaches for his crown.
A special design he oversaw, its origin came from a dusty and somewhat dented tiara recovered from the palace rubble that had belonged to the "lost" empress. The metalwork and settings had been crude and the stones where unrefined and unpolished but they were rare Mustafarian minerals and thus of suitable value. Now they have been cut down and smoothed to sit in the grand headpiece that he currently wears.
Satisfied with his position and appearance, Hux accepts a new decanter and glass from another slave as once silent attendants bustle forth with more datapads and mindless tasks that he must delegate for the day. What a life. How he loves and abhors it.
"My Lord!"
"Good gods, what now Mitaka?"
His right-hand man dashes over the mosaic ground, coming to a graceless stop and hovering awkwardly at the base of his throne. "We've received reports," he says, breathless, "of a disturbance on Naboo."
"Where on Naboo?"
"Theed, sir. The palace—"
"What?!" Hux jumps to his feet; his crown falls askew. "Get me Magess!"
"That's just it. We've tried. I tried on every secure channel that there is but… there's nothing, sir."
All eyes look to the Supreme Leader. Hux can feel them desperate, judging.
"What do you advise?" Mitaka says.
Hux thinks he can see the head of the statue disappear beyond the faint horizon. He tugs at the ties of his cape; they feel too tight about his neck. "Well, then… very well." He pulls until the ties come loose and shrugs the cloak fully off. "Go ready my ship and make contact with Kirss and the fourth battalion. We shall rendezvous in the Naboo system."
"And what about the court?" a stupid Gran adviser asks.
Hux kills him with a single blaster shot. "I am the court." He raises one outstretched arm and the rest tentatively follow. "All hail the Supreme Leader."
"I have a bad feeling about this."
"That's because you're using the wrong clearance codes."
"I am not using the—look, do you wanna play pilot?"
"Well, how hard can it be?"
Poe's look of frustration is replaced by one of affection, and Elsa cannot help but smile. She shakes her head. "Poe, what are we doing?"
"Kriff if I know, Blue. The will of the Force? Except I suck at this stuff. And all the intel we have says Naboo's been quietly neutral ever since the coup. So why would Ren—Ben—" he tries to ignore Elsa's silent laughter as he corrects himself for a final time, "the Emperor be here now?"
Elsa does not know, and she answers with more weighted silence. They enter the planet's atmosphere under the guise of Corellian fabric merchants. The transporter they use has years of logs following similar trade routes and there is nothing that should raise suspicion. But it is the very quietness that disturbs her now.
Passing over Naboo's lush green surface, Poe steers them towards the capital city of Theed. At first, they decide to land closer to the outskirts but they are immediately drawn by billowing plumes of smoke that emanate from a grand building in the center.
"Is that a sign?" Poe says.
"Works for me." Elsa points him in the direction of a large docking bay at lakeside. "Try over there."
There is no reason why but, if they are to find chaos, who would notice a small and battered transport ship in the midst of it all? There seem to be more vehicles taking off anyway, as if most of the population has decided to evacuate.
"Like I said, bad feeling," Poe mutters, but he forces Elsa to stay behind him as they disembark.
Blasters both at the ready, they step out into rushing crowds. Many are fleeing towards the city, while others are loading various goods onto their own transporters. The objects appear to be a strange mixture of furniture and paintings and statues and even clothes.
"What are they—?"
"Looters," Poe says. "Which means whoever was in charge is no longer in charge now."
They move against the tide of the crowd and further inside the palace, passing through courtyards reduced to rubble and bodies, most of which wear First Order uniforms.
"I feel like we're missing something."
"There's something here." Elsa is sure. "Why would there be so much security for a local seat of government? How have we overlooked—?"
"Are you the princess?"
Poe is standing between her and the man who asked the question, his weapon raised. "Can we help you? Keep your hands where I can see them."
"He told me I'd know when I found you."
Elsa looks around Poe to see a man in a torn uniform, the marks on his chest that hang by a thread indicating the rank of captain. His hands are raised at Poe's order and he appears unarmed.
"Poe." She places a hand on his shoulder. "I'll be okay." She steps out enough so that the man can see her. "Who told you I'd be here?"
"He said you were coming. And that I should tell you what I know."
Poe still has his blaster aimed at the officer's head. "What the kriff are you on about?"
"They were all here. The Knights of Ren. And the Empress. Magess was in charge but she doesn't remember so he's gone to save her. But it's his power. Not Hux. Hux was only—"
A great shadow forms overhead as a huge star destroyer parks in the lower atmosphere, directly above the palace.
"You see what I'm seeing?" Poe says.
"But the Emperor!" Elsa runs to the captain and grasps him by the lapels. "He's alive! You saw him, right? Leia's son. Kylo Ren."
"He said his name was Ben Solo."
"Elsa!" Poe drags her away, eyes casting behind him as a smaller entourage of ships starts to descend from above. "We better lay low before they reach here."
"Why? I was just—"
"Elsa." He pulls her into an alcove and presses her back against a wall. "I get what you're saying. I heard him, alright? But stay with me now. Do you see what is happening? It's not safe anymore."
Elsa looks up to the sky and finally it comes into focus. She knows this ship. She's studied countless hours of holovids and intel reports until she could recite the intricacies of its schematics. She could not have asked for a better gift. "We have to sneak on board."
"Are you crazy?"
"Who's in charge here?"
Poe sighs, pressing his forehead to hers. "You, Blue. Always."
"Thank you," she breathes, thinking of Amilyn and her son and the one who gifted the child to her. I will avenge you all, she thinks and says, "It's about time I paid Hux a visit."
Ben's face relaxes and his body goes still in Force-induced sleep, but his heartbeat is growing dangerously slow.
Rey knows this, even as she knows that she has had no formal training or exposure to medicine but she can feel it, in the halting of muscles, in the way that the black blood that oozes out of him is waning, in the exhaustion of the mitochondria powering each cell as they ready themselves for stasis and rest.
No, she thinks. This will not be how they end. How he ends. Rey shoves down panic at the thought. She had to quiet his words—too much energy expended and there wasn't enough time, she knows this as if the Force whispered it inside her head. There was too much of everything—his love and elation and his questions: You do remember, don't you? (Does she?)
Yes, she thinks—and absolutely, unequivocally, no. A maelstrom churns inside her; memories of her life swirl and threaten to consume and there is no time (there is never enough fucking time) to sort them. In this moment, she only knows two things:
That she loves Ben Solo. And that Ben Solo is dying.
And the third: she will not lose him again.
Ben's peaceful visage starts to blur; Rey keeps forgetting to breathe. It is a conscious effort to work her lungs in and out like a beskarsmith's bellows, enough to clear her sight and her mind and give spark to the voice that lives inside her. The Force, she thinks, as she recalls her dream with Luke. She remembers the Force and it remembers her too.
Instinctively she calls to it, and a well-spring of energy answers. White-hot and burning in its intensity, it washes over her and through her, spreading out to the tips of her fingers, where it awaits her command.
The living things, they speak to me… they tell me secrets.
It is her voice she hears but the conversation she does not recognize; yet somehow, she knows that this power resides in her hands and it is now that she must use it.
She touches his face, marred and bleeding, black blood forging paths across his pale white skin. She asks the blood to stop and… it does. Laying fingers upon his lips, she asks them to smooth themselves, to banish the scratches that have distorted their natural shape—and they comply.
She strokes his hair, beautifully soft and black, the length and texture stirring memories that she cannot quite reach but she knows without hesitation that they are real. At the base of his neck is a deep wound with black blood all around. She asks the blood to stop, to stay in its place and go back to its familiar pathways. Though it is not the fresh red blood of living things, it hums softly to her and agrees that it doesn't like it out here in the open. Go on then, she thinks. Go to where you are warm and safe, and the strange blood recedes, pulling itself back into Ben's body, and the faint echo of his heart begins to grow stronger.
As the blood obeys, it cries out—it is hurting, it tells her; there is something here that is not right. Show me what's wrong, she thinks, and the blood moves out of the way until she sees a shiny glass object embedded in the base of Ben's neck.
It hurts so much! the blood says; this is wrong, please help.
I will, she tells it, and shushes the blood to be quiet, asking it to stay safely back where it belongs. Using the Force as her hands, she dislodges the object and lifts it from Ben's body, holding it aloft so she can inspect it but not so close that it might touch her skin or his. It is a crystal shard, but the energy that emanates from it is something terrible. This is wrong, she agrees. This is horror and decay. Even away from his body, it continues to drag everything inside him to a morbid halt.
Yes! Yes! The blood sings. We told you! Please make it go away.
She moves the shard with her mind until it hovers several feet away. She tries drawing on destruction and passion, seeking to explode the object, to shatter and rend it beyond even particle recognition. It does not work. Frustrated, she lets it drop to the stone floor.
Erase it, Ben's blood sings to her. You know the way.
But I don't, Rey thinks. She cannot do this. She does not know how.
She can hear Ben's heartbeat slowing again. He has expended so much energy in the Force, great depths that have been drained from him; she can feel it, his immeasurable power spent trying to reach her (she remembers dreams of a monster, of a man; she remembers him calling her awake). The tide of memory threatens to break but she cannot afford the distraction; there is so little time left. At this, her tears begin to fall in earnest, great fat drops that land upon the stone.
You can do this, the blood soothes and calls. It is inside you, we have felt it, you can.
As the growing ocean of memories swirl around her, one small piece floats to its surface, soft and benign as feathers. A glass of water with a root inside. Molodark root. It has been long extinct. I want you to make it grow.
Grow?
You will know what to do.
Rey puts away all other sound—Ben's heartbeat, the crying blood, the unsettling humming of this place—and fixes upon the puddle of her tears. Just like the old root sitting in a glass. And in that silence, she knows. The answer was with her all along.
She touches her finger to the drops that lie on the floor and calls the Light inside her. Make this, she thinks. Use the Light. In this moment she is nothing more than its vessel.
At first, the is nothing. And then… singing.
A gentle song, a child's voice, a little bird safe and warm in the nest. The voice becomes stronger and the liquid of her tears begins to shift and move until a small green tendril springs forth.
Yes, she thinks to herself, this is the way. She takes the burning Light inside her and truly lets it out.
The tendril rises up into a shoot, and that shoot forms a vine. The vine gives birth to leaves and strengthens into a branch and forms a trunk about ten inches high. She has made a tree from her tears. It should be ludicrous, but it feels like the most natural thing.
Because it is the most natural thing. This is who she is.
She shifts Ben carefully from her lap so he is lying on the floor, murmurs to his tired heart to keep on beating, just a little longer; she will make it better, she promises (and she hears it hum contentedly in return), then she places both palms to the ground. The Light inside her stretches luxuriantly like a great cat waking from a long nap. The energy within her is sharp and sweet and oh so very alive.
You do not belong to me, she says to it—you are me.
It nods back in calm understanding. I am.
Rey smiles. Then let us work.
Green grass carpets the great chamber of the Lords. What's left of it, that is. The woman in white kneels down, nudging the Force with her mind and her hands, and life escapes in every direction. Tendrils reach out and clasp the shikkar blade as it hovers in midair. It does not shatter but rather becomes… consumed, as the green vines that hold it feed off of it, devouring its Dark energy until the malevolence is subsumed into the living thing that surrounds it.
There is a man lying nearby, once handsome and strong, his body now crushed. The shikkar has been removed but there is deep gash across his chest, and his thigh has been cleaved to the bone.
Once an emperor, ruler of men; he is now just a broken pile of bones.
The woman holds out her hands and closes her eyes; soon a cushion of moss and clover rises beneath the once-emperor's body until it has made a bed for him that brings him to the hand-height of his former empress. She examines him, whispers to his wounds, asks them with sweet words to knot themselves together and they obey. The halves of his chest rejoin themselves and form a solid wall of muscle and skin; his leg follows suit and restores itself under her gentle encouragement. She even prevails upon the threads of his sweater to retie themselves into their old shape so they can do the honor of clothing him, and they trip over themselves to do so, each particle working harder than the next, desperate to please their new mistress. Their mistress smiles approval and the threads rejoice. She leans down to touch the man's lips to clear away all traces of blood, both the red of others and the black of the one who lies so peacefully before her.
Peace is a lie; the ancient wisdom of the Sith declares it to be so. And yet, the observer finds himself relaxing in the view before him, in the strange garden that has made its home here, the woman in white and the sleeping man in black. The spirits of Moraband tremble at this strange power and the observer trembles too. And yet, he finds himself softening to a form long forgotten. An ancient face with long nose and chin, its narrowed, irascible eyes that matched a once wry wit. A mischievous face, but one without malice. He breathes deeply, as if his nonexistent lungs could still hold the perfumed air of organic matter. As if he could breathe her.
There is no peace, he thinks. But life is not peace. Life is anything but.
And she is life.
How he has waited for this, for a sign, for an answer. And here it stands, growing a garden in his tomb, reviving the dead sands of Moraband into a fearful and beautiful paradise. He is afraid. He is exhilarated. He is closer to being alive than he has felt in a thousand years.
There cannot be the many, he thinks. This was his decree and he was right. There can be only two. But what a two they would be. He breathes again, a ghost searching for real air. He craves it. Not even Vitiate and the slaughter of an entire planet could match the raw power of this.
Through strength, I gain victory, he thinks. The Force shall set me free.
The woman in white stops; she shifts and turns, his presence in the Force too obvious and now she can sense him. Fear spikes through her—he can feel it; it's exquisite.
"Who's there?" she says.
No one, he thinks. I am no one. But you are everything. And I could show you so much more.
He steps out of the shadows. Her eyes land on his translucent form, and he can see her searching her memories.
"I do not know you," she says.
He shakes his head. "Nor should you. But I am not here to harm you. You have called me," he says, and he means it, he truly does. "I am Bane of Moraband, and I have been waiting for this."
"For what," she says, defensive. "What would you have of me?"
"Nothing," he tells her. There is no peace, he knows. "I have come to set you free."