Welcome to Exegol
When Rey emerged out of hyperspace, she immediately put the X-wing into attack-mode at the sight of the massive armada of Star Destroyers that surrounded her. She flew past the fleet cautiously, but could somehow sense that they weren't going to fire on her. The Emperor wanted her here alive for some twisted reason.
Rey tried to calm her breathing as she weaved through Star Destroyers and evaded the deadly and erratic bolts of lightning. It reminded her of the Force lightning she had unleashed on Pasaana, and she shuddered at the memory.
She saw a hulking, black, and foreboding silhouette in front of her and steered the X-wing towards the base of it. The ship landed with a soft thump on the ground.
Rey sank into her seat for a moment, allowing herself a moment to breathe. Her hands were shaking so she forced them to be still into her lap. Closing her eyes for a moment, she reached out to the Force to calm herself. She took a few deep breaths as she steeled herself for what was to come.
Her hands, which were now steady, came up to undo the chinstrap of her helmet. She made sure that both of the Skywalker lightsabers were clipped to her belt before she exited the X-wing.
The air was dry and felt hot and cold at the same time. Lightning flashed overhead sporadically with horrible, grating screeches. The smell of ozone was heavy in the air. The ground was dry and dusty. Her boots kicked up a faint cloud of dust with each step. Everything was bathed in an ethereal blue glow and the cold darkness pouring from this planet seemed infinite.
Rey walked forwards steadily, willing herself not to shake. She knew that confronting the Emperor, her grandfather, Darth Sidious, was insane. If he had cheated death before, who's to say he won't do it again? But she had to try. She owed that to the Resistance. To Leia, and Luke. And for Ben…
Her throat tightened when she thought of him. His dark eyes still haunted her, as they pierced through her soul. She tried not to focus on how much she fucking missed him. She knew it was selfish of her, but she still felt so alone.
But she felt a little lighter when she remembered telling him that she had wanted to take his hand. The pain and torment in his eyes had disappeared for a moment, giving way to shock and awe. It allowed the mask of Kylo Ren to fall, letting her see the Ben Solo she always believed in.
She had been so tempted to touch him when he looked at her like that. Completely vulnerable and like she was the only thing in the galaxy. She'd wanted to touch his face, his hair, his hand...she'd wanted to hold him, to embrace him, hell, she had even been tempted to just kiss him.
Stars, she missed him so fucking much. But she couldn't think about him now. She was tense enough already. And the massive armada of Star Destroyers did not help ease her nerves. But she steadied on.
As she made her way forward, her surroundings were getting darker and darker the deeper she made into Exegol. It felt like the ceiling was going to collapse on her at any moment. Rey was beginning to feel claustrophobic, even though she had spent most of her life in crowded places, scavenging ships, living in an AT-AT, and walking through the engines of downed Star Destroyers. But this felt different. The air felt oppressive as if it would like nothing more than to tighten its chokehold around her to suffocate her body and crush her spirit.
Rey stepped onto the platform that began to lower as soon as she was standing on it. The stone ledge lowered into the depths and caverns of Exegol. The flashes of lightning provided enough light for her to catch fleeting glimpses of machinery, large cracks in the ancient stone, and giant statues that were taller than a Star Destroyer. The hallway was surrounded by identical, foreboding, stone statues staring coldly down at her. It was as if they were judging her fate and had come to a displeasing conclusion.
She knew instinctively that they were memorials of Sith Lords who had come before. Rey hated that she knew that, she hated that the cold that shrouded this place felt familiar as if it had been hovering over her from the day she was born.
Rey craned her neck back to look around her. She suddenly felt very small, and she realized just how insignificant and tiny she was compared to the sheer gargantuan of this place. It was ancient, but she could sense the power that lingered here.
Gusts of dry wind whipped pieces of her hair free and they hung loosely around her face. Her palms felt clammy as she slowly walked through the hall.
Lightning screeched and she flinched as the galley was briefly illuminated by pale blue light, charged with electricity. The smell of ozone rang fresh in the air.
A glint of metal caught the corner of her vision. Some sort of machinery or mechanisms. Rey turned her head and squinted at the machinery beside her. She saw lab tables, rusted and abandoned equipment, old withered husks that looked suspiciously like bodies. Cloning technology, So that's how the Emperor had survived.
Lightning flashed and she caught a glimpse of torsos floating in an eerie yellow liquid. They were all identical to that of...Snoke! Rey flinched and recoiled from the sight, her stomach dropped and her mouth went dry.
Snoke had just been another pawn in the Emperor's game. Rey clenched her jaw tightly, a habit that she had picked up from Kylo Ren from whenever he was frustrated. The muscles in his jaw would flinch and tighten and her own body mimicked that now.
Rey was tired of being used. She was tired of being a pawn in someone else's game. She was angry, so she used that to strengthen herself. She curled her hands into fists and swiftly twisted her body away from the mechanisms.
She turned to the side to see two colossal walls of stone in front of her. There was a slim opening between them that led into a narrow corridor. Rey took a draught of the dry air and stepped inside, illuminated by the screeching flashes of lightning.
The pathway was barely 6 feet wide, and the walls seemed to stretch upward forever with no end in sight. She could see the light at the top, but somehow that made it crueler. To be able to see freedom, but knowing that she would never be able to reach it.
The lightning screeched and crackled above her as she made her way down the corridor. When she emerged from the pathway, the corridor led to an enormous amphitheater that stretched on for miles and miles. It was as big as a hollowed-out mountain, and Rey could only gape at the sheer scale of it all.
Something shadowy caught her eye though, and she turned her head and her eyes widened. She hurried forward slightly to confirm what she was seeing. Her blood ran cold and she could feel a chill run up her arms and through her spine all the way down to her stomach.
A massive, black dais that carried a hauntingly familiar vision. It was a chair roughly carved of obsidian, with spikes curving around and in towards itself. Like a halo of thorns, or claws of darkness threatening to completely envelop whoever sat on it.
A throne… The throne she had seen in her visions…
The throne of the Sith.
Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the silhouette of the chair and Rey remembered the vision of her sitting atop it, along with Kylo Ren… Rey swallowed hard when she thought of Ben. But she was soon distracted by something else.
There was an eerily soft, constant chanting coming from behind her. She slowly turned around and saw thousands of hooded figures in the stands. Faceless apostles, worshippers. Sith cultists. Zealously awaiting the return of the Sith.
Their chanting created a rumble that grew in intensity and volume as she stared at the stands. It got to the point where it was almost painfully loud when suddenly, they stopped altogether. A horrible, screeching, grating clash of lighting reverberated throughout the amphitheater as if demanding its silence.
A pregnant moment of silence hung suspended in the air for a moment. Then, a low, chilling, and hauntingly familiar voice broke the silence.
"Long have I waited…"
Rey froze, her whole body felt paralyzed. She recognized this voice from every nightmare she had ever had. From her darkest fears, the doubting whispers that had haunted her on Jakku. Rey even recognized it from one more place.
She and Ben had been connected many times throughout their relationship, and it often happened while they were sleeping. Their dreams often mixed with each other. Rey remembered the chilling screams of Ben's nightmares mixed with hers, but this voice was the constant source of doubt and self-loathing that Ben carried with him all the time. The voice that manipulated him and fed him false lies throughout his childhood, and the voice that had continued to hold him captive in his adulthood. The same voice was calling to her now.
The voice was deep and slow, almost leisurely as if it had all the time in the galaxy but it resounded through the amphitheater with the force of a thousand blaster bolts.
Rey forced herself to move her body to turn around. She forced herself to look up and a robed figure materialized in her line of sight. It was connected to a strange mechanism that kept it suspended above the ground. Her grip on her lightsaber tightened when she saw his face.
It was hideous, monstrous, rotting away like a corpse. The skin was wrinkled, drooping, and decaying, barely clinging to his skeletal form. His eyes were milky white but red-rimmed and hollowed out. His mouth and lips were darkened with dried blood and decay only added to his repulsiveness. One of his hands was half-rotted away, leaving bone and rotting flesh visible. The cracked, pale, and disintegrating skin was split open as if it had been stretched over the body too many times.
It was merely a shell of what this creature used to be. A pale imitation of his days of power. It was the Emperor himself, Emperor Palpatine, Darth Sidious, her grandfather. His spirit was trapped inside the decaying, artificial form, his power too devastating to contain inside the rotting corpse.
Rey stared in horror at the monstrosity before her. Palpatine's face stretched into a grotesque smile as he continued.
"For my grandchild to come home." A smug triumphant expression crossed his face and Rey flinched. This creature, that called himself her family, radiated pure evil, darkness oozing out of its essence.
Even though Rey wanted nothing more than to put as much distance between her and this creature as possible, her feet twitched, wanting to move forward. There was something strangely and unnervingly compelling about him. She couldn't look away, and she hated herself for it.
Palpatine's face contorted in a grotesque sneer.
"I never wanted you dead," he said, his rotting lips pulling back into a triumphant smile, showing black, rotted teeth. "I wanted you here," he said, and then his voice lowered. "Empress Palpatine." His deformed hand gestured towards the throne, and Rey felt a wave of fear and panic wash over her.
Everything in her was revolted by that idea, but her body was straining to move forward. And her mind began whispering promises, promises of power, of control.
"You will take the throne," Palpatine assured her as the machine that held his body approached. "It is your birthright to rule, here. It is in your blood. Our blood." He sneered and the Sith acolytes chattered excitedly.
Rey wanted nothing more than to curl up into a fetal position and just hide, just to get away from everything, to run. But she forced air into her lungs and steeled herself.
"I haven't come to join the Sith, I've come to end them," she said, forcing her voice to remain steady.
Palpatine scoffed. "As a Jedi," he said, his voice dripping with contempt.
"Yes," she said quickly.
The corpse of her grandfather smiled.
"No. Your hatred. Your anger. You want to kill me," he said smugly. "Good...that is what I want." Rey looked at him in confusion. "Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you." Rey's eyes widened in horror and Palpatine smiled cruelly. "As all the Sith live in me. You will be Empress. We will be one."
The Sith acolytes cheered and the roar of the crowd filled the amphitheater. Rey's chest suddenly felt tight, so tight that she couldn't get air into her lungs. Her limbs were frozen to the spot, she couldn't breathe. Her eyes were white with fear and her entire body was trembling. Dread flooded her mind and it felt like her limbs were filled with lead. She was trapped. Where the hell did she go from here?
Rey was on the verge of panic, but she had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. All that remained were thousands of zealous Sith acolytes and her rotting corpse of a grandfather, who also happened to be the most evil person in the galaxy. She didn't know what to do.
Rey was completely and utterly alone.
Ben Solo came out of hyperspace into Exegol in the middle of hellfire.
"Shit!" he swore as a TIE fighter zoomed past him. He gritted his teeth as an X-wing swooped by, nearly clipping the edge of his wing.
Ben sensed a presence as another X-wing flew overhead, expertly spinning past a group of TIEs. It had an unusual paint job, a mixture of orange, grey, and blue.
Dameron, Ben realized. The pilot that had started this all. He supposed that oddly, if not for Dameron and his kriffing droid, he never would've met Rey. Ben almost snorted at that thought before cursing again as an explosion, too close for his liking, reminded him that he was in the middle of a shootout.
He forced the ship down into a rough and shaky descent as the old ship fought him. It was barely holding together as it was. Ben looked at the massive fleet of Star Destroyers and his eyes widened at the sheer enormity of firepower. They were monstrous and huge and very intimidating and they radiated pure power. Luckily, they didn't pay attention to one random, out-dated TIE fighter. They were focused on the Resistance ships.
Once the entryway was in sight, Ben flinched at the overwhelming darkness pouring from this place. It tapped into his deepest fears, his insecurities, his resentments, and his anger, but he was done being manipulated. He pushed the intruding thoughts out of his head and remained focused.
All he had to do was to get to Rey. What would happen afterward? He had no idea. He had thrown his lightsaber in the ocean, all he had was a blaster. But he knew that nothing would stop him from reaching her.
He lost focus for a moment and swore when he realized he had gotten too close to a Destroyer. He regained control and set himself back on course.
Suddenly, Ben thought of his father and imagined him saying something like, "I don't know. Fly casual!" The corner of Ben's lips lifted ever so slightly, and he realized that he was thinking of his father, and it didn't hurt so much anymore. That overwhelming guilt that had tortured him for so long was lifted, and he felt like he could breathe.
Han Solo was his past, but Rey was his light. And there was nothing in the galaxy that would stop him from reaching her.
Author's Note: Hello, everyone! I'm SO SO sorry about the long delay. I got super busy and school just started back up again, and I didn't have a chance to sit down and actually write. I still don't know if this is any good, haha. Again, I'm SO sorry that I made you wait so long, even though I promised I wasn't going to be another month, lmao. A huge thank you to everyone who reads this story, who leaves comments, who favorites and/or follows this story! I'm so thankful for all of you, and you guys keep me motivated :) I hope you enjoy this chapter! I'm not going to promise or even approximate when the next chapter is going to be up though, haha. It seems like those aren't very reliable. But...I think I can make it up to everyone in some way. I may or may not be posting a oneshot after this goes up to make up for the lack of content. Ok, enough of me rambling, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
Oops, I forgot to add this when I originally posted this. Are people interested in seeing a "prequel" of sorts to Force Bonds? It would basically be the Reylo scenes from The Force Awakens since this story begins during The Last Jedi. It would be the same format here just different scenes. Idk if anyone is interested, but if you guys are, let me know!